Booker T. Washington was born in Hale’s Ford, VA in 1856. He attended the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, and would become an educator, author, orator, African American civil rights leader and advisor to presidents of the United States. Washington would become one of the leaders in the African American community to champion change for his people. A republican who preached a philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation while urging African Americans to accept discrimination and to concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work in order to change their economic status. Washington was a key proponent of African American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League, headquartered …show more content…
Washington understood the politics and oppositions he would face, however, would continue with his plan to end the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of African Americans who still lived in the South. Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15, 1929. He attended Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University where he would graduate, receive his B.A., B.D., and PH. D. A Southern preacher who advocated for a peaceful resistance to racism, black civil and social equality. King organized peaceful protests that were non-violent which would garner media attention. King believed and said, “If the government is not doing its job, then the citizens can do things considered illegal by the current government (like protesting) in order to bring about change.” Always a fierce worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the leading organization of its kind in the nation. In December 1955, a nonviolent demonstration, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 382 days propelled the Supreme Court of the United States on December 21, 1956, to declare unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses. African Americans and Caucasians would now be able to ride the buses as equals. The 1963 March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since