r there was little that their white opposition could do to stop the movement.Another technique the blacks used to gain their freedom was through sit-ins, freedom rides, and a march on Washington. One “sit-in” which is probably the most famous involves one woman in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Rosa parks was a member of the NAACP and on December 1, 1955 she refused to give her seat up to a white man on the bus. Parks was arrested and found guilty of breaking a local city ordinance, but she knows she did the right thing as she states: “I felt it was just something I had to do” (Henretta 802). The incident would be heard nationwide and spark the Montgomery bus boycott to bring about one of the most decorated leaders of the civil rights movement Martin Luther King Jr. King and other clergyman founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the SCLC based in Atlanta. The church had always been the center for blacks social and cultural life. The SCLC would be a center for great inspirational speakers and would be strong moral support for the movement. The SCLC would grow to join the NAACP as one the major advocates for Civil Rights. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and Whitney Young of the National Urban League, and the black socialist Bayard Rustin would organize a march on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr. would make one of the world’s most memorable speeches on August 28, 1963 to about 250,000 black and white demonstrators. King would ask the demonstrators to fight for civil rights not out of violence, but on a more political level. King made his optimisim felt throughout the crowd that day by letting them feel his vision: “ I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Americn Dream” (Boller 231). This I have a dream speech would be felt not only by th...
