Challenging Jim Crow: King’s Approach to Racial Discrimination

The chapter is about those political movements in which King had participated. Beginning with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Strike, the chapter makes a threadbare analysis of the series of non-violent movements that became most critical during the era of civil rights campaign in the US. What had begun in Montgomery was further pursued in the 1963 Birmingham campaign, the 1963 Washington March and 1965 movement in Selma against racial segregation. An era of sustained mass militancy over civil rights issues came to an end with the acceptance of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Two movements in which King had participated create a history because while the 1963 Birmingham campaign led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Selma upsurge culminated in guaranteeing voting rights to the hitherto disenfranchised Negroes of the South.