According to Coretta King, after this trip her husband 'constantly pondered how to apply Gandhian principles in America.' In 1957 King joined with the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and Bayard Rustin to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1957 Wofford arranged for King to visit India. Harris Wofford was an early supporter of the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South in the late 1950s and became a friend and unofficial advisor to Martin Luther King. and the boycott came to an end on 20th December, 1956. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued.įor thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.Īfter the arrest of Rosa Parks, King and his friends, Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar Nixon, and Bayard Rustin helped organize protests against bus segregation. In Montgomery, like most towns in the Deep South, buses were segregated. King was also influenced by Henry David Thoreau and his theories on how to use nonviolent resistance to achieve social change.Īfter his marriage to Coretta Scott, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was particularly struck by Gandhi's words: 'Through our pain we will make them see their injustice'. Over the next few months King read several books on the ideas of Gandhi, and eventually became convinced that the same methods could be employed by blacks to obtain civil rights in America.

While studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King heard a lecture on Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India. After considering careers in medicine and law, he entered the ministry.

King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948. Both his father and grandfather were Baptist preachers who had been actively involved in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January, 1929.

Martin luther king letter