Kennedy and Martin Luther King

The America Civil Rights Act


Pastor Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson and Presidente John F. Kennedy

"During the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act. After the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy failed to put forward his promised legislation.

Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much."

In an attempt to persuade Congress to pass Kennedy's proposed legislation, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized the famous March on Washington. On 28th August, 1963, more than 200,000 people marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. At the end of the march Martin Luther King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was still being debated by Congress when he was assassinated in November, 1963. The new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a poor record on civil rights issues, took up the cause. Using his considerable influence in Congress, Johnson was able to get the legislation passed.

President Johnson sings the Civil Rights Act in the presence
of Pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. on July 02, of 1964.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on colour, race or national origin".

source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsitin.htm

Joao Cruzue
mailto me: cruzue@gmail.com

What would you say

If you could go back in time and see a little boy like this
in the midst of a street by the year of 1939

whon would you say he is alike with?

To understand what we are talking about, I am inviting you to read the post below, we did about a person with a mission and special talents. I know God has a wonderful habit of surprising us, once He is always using simple and humble things to confuse the wise ones. Therefore, when you look at a child, such this one walking on the street, rembember yourself that he also may become a great instrument of the God's love, as it was happened with Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.

TRIBUTE TO
PASTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.
BORN IN JANUARY 15, 1929


Pastor King
(1929 - 1968)

The words of Martin Luther King still have power and grace, even 40 years after his assassination in Memphis/US, on April 04 of 1968. As a tribute of his commemorative holiday, on January 15 of 2012, we present to you a gallery of photografies of the famous fighter for the civil rights, shot by Flip Schulke – Time.com, followed by MLK words on nonviolence, race, peace, freedom, black power, dreans etc. Our purpose with the publication of this post is to bring back to our conscience that words must be cemented with attitudes. In the beginning nobody will pay attention on you, but the time of fulfillings will come if you persist to ask , to knock and to search behind your vision.

ON NONVIOLENCE

(From Birmingham jail, 1963):
"In your statement, you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of the Crucifixion?"

Arrested

Three months into the strike, 156 protesters, including King, were arrested for violating a 1921 law against "hindering" a bus. King was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in prison, a move that backfired because it called national attention to the protest.

The Prayer Pilgrimage

In 1957, nearly 25,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. for three hours of spirituals and speeches urging the federal government to fulfill the requirement of Brown v. Board of Education. The last speech of the day was delivered by King.

Desegregation in Tennessee

In its landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Clinton High School in Tennessee was ordered by a federal judge to be the first to integrate. Photographer Robert W. Kelley, sent by Life to document the first day, encountered this scene in front of the school.

White Reaction
against the end of the "old" rulles on schooll segregation.



The Strike Committee

The boycott called on the city to ban the Jim Crow practices on the city buses, namely that black riders not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and that the buses be required to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities.

Sympathy Strike
Black communities in other cities, like Tallahassee (above), organized similar boycotts.



Back on the Bus

Life photographer Don Cravens documented Rosa Parks' first ride on the integrated bus system. Of the strike, King wrote, "We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation."

Victory

In June of 1956, the federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. After surviving challenges up to the Supreme Court, the ruling stood firm and, on December 20, 1956, King declared the boycott over. The following day, members of the black community, including Rosa Parks, boarded the buses for the first time in over a year.

ON FREEDOM

"So let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, let freedom ring. But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. And when this happens, when we let it ring, we will speed that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old "Negro Spiritual":
(1963)

Free at last, free at last
Thank God Almighty,
We're free at last."



'Give Us The Ballot'

King's speech that day was a hypnotic oration on the sacred rights and powers of the vote. "Give us the ballot," he said, "and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights." A harbinger of the "I Have a Dream" speech that King would deliver from the same spot six years later, it catapulted him to national visibility.

ON THE DREAM OF FREEDOM

"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed . . . that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true."(1963):

ON NONCOMFORMITY

"This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority."(1963)

ON PEACE

"Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant." (1964):

ON MARCHING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

"Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom. Let us march to the realization of the American dream. Let us march on segregated housing. Let us march on segregated schools. Let us march on poverty. Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race baiters disappear from the political arena, until the Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence."(Selma to Montgomery, 1965):

ON BLACK POWER

"Today's despair is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow's justice. Black Power is an implicit and often explicit belief in black separatism. Yet behind Black Power's legitimate and necessary concern for group unity and black identity lies the belief that there can be a separate black road to power and fulfillment. Few ideas are more unrealistic. There is no salvation for the Negro through isolation."(1967)

ON BLACKS IN AMERICA

"Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands."(From Birmingham jail, 1963):

THE LAST WORDS

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I won't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."(April 3, 1968 The night before his assassination)

Sources
http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/mlk/index.html
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1704734,00.html




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