King: "I Have a Dream"
1955 AD
1955 1955
86.17W32.22N
MISC

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
	Mrs. Rosa Parks, a black, middle-aged seamstress, was an unlikely revolutionary. When the footsore woman got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, she was just glad to find a seat.
	But at another stop some white people got on, and the law required blacks give up seats for whites. She refused and was arrested.
	The black community, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, urged blacks not to ride buses. The buses ran empty. White businessmen, who were hurt by the boycott, urged the problem be settled.
	Montgomery made King famous, and for the rest of his life he was active in desegregation causes through a black ministers' organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
	He fought for an end to the poll tax and other devices that prevented blacks from voting, and supported lunch-counter "sit-ins." At these sit-ins, blacks refused to leave restaurants until they were served, and sympathetic whites refused to order until the blacks were served.
	Demonstrations of this type spread throughout the South, and many demonstrators were injured and some were killed.
	In 1963 King organized a "March on Washington," to support a civil rights bill proposed by President John Kennedy. In front of the Lincoln Memorial he gave his most famous speech to about 200,000 people.
	"I have a dream," King said, "a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
	In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed a comprehensive civil rights bill and King won the Nobel Peace Prize.
	Then, in 1968, King went to Memphis to address a group of striking garbage men. On April 4, while standing on the balcony of his hotel, he was shot dead. His assassin was James Earl Ray, an escaped convict. Ray was later arrested by Scotland Yard in London.
	But King's work was not lost. As result of his efforts, many large cities have elected black mayors, more blacks have found white collar jobs, and many white suburbs have become integrated.