The Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter: The Rise of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Source: tikkun.org

In the 1950s, it was becoming apparent that the NAACP was failing at enacting actual social changes, which caused the rise of protest movements in the South. Protest movements quickly gained support from local churches and from the majority of African Americans in the South. The young preacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. unified local protests movements and created a national platform, which advocated for nonviolent civil disobedience, drawing on the influence of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophies.[9] The tactics of the Civil Rights Movement under the leadership of King began to gain traction with media attention, as the media highlighted the most brutal forms of injustice committed by white police officers and white civilians against African American protestors. African American protestors staged lunch sit-ins, marches at government buildings, and boycotts on local merchants through the Birmingham Campaign.[10] This nonviolent resistance was met with excessive amounts of brutality, including the use of fire hoses and vicious dogs on protestors. Images of these violent tactics to subdue the peaceful protests rapidly spread throughout nation, which lent greater popular support for the Civil Rights Movement.[11]