How Did Martin Luther King Support The Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights and Peaceful Protest

African American protests first began in December 1955 following the arrest of Rosa Park, which sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott that launched Martin Luther King Jr. onto a political stage on a national level as the face of the civil rights movement. King advocated in fighting segregation and discrimination through nonviolent tactics such as sit ins, which he believed would educate many White oppressors. The use of sit ins were very effective in desegregating public accommodations due to the fact that the African American protesters could not simply be ignored by Whites. By simply sitting in public view or boycotting a business, African American protesters were able to address the issues of employment discrimination

What began with the Watts Riot in 1965, transformed to hundreds of racial riots that occurred in the following years throughout the major cities within the United States. (Gurr, 1989, p. 293). Additionally, the violent riots included several confrontations between armed militant African Americans and the police, which boiled over in Cleveland on July 23, 1968, in which a shootout resulted in the death and injuries of police officers, African American militants, and bystanders. In response to the increases in the number of incidents involving African Americans and police brutality, the Black Panther party was founded in Oakland in 1966, which advocated for armed self-defense of African Americans against the police and revolutionary change through violent riots (Gurr, 1989, pp.

Martin luther King Jr’s approach of using nonviolent tactics such as sit ins was highly more effective than the in gaining White support than the violent Black riots. The violent urban riots throughout the major U.S cities featured militant African Americans, which projected a Black power symbol that frightened Whites, and thus augmented their White resistance to racial change. Moreover, the government responded to the riots by creating a number of riot commissions, which were charged with investigating the causes of the riots and proposing solutions that could limit their resurgence. The investigations done by the riot commissions resulted in several socioeconomic reforms that were implemented by the government to lessen the likelihood of any riots from reoccuring. One of the local government responses called for an improvement in employment opportunities for African Americans through job-training programs as well as additional efforts to get both public and private institutions to hire more minority candidates. Another response by the government on a local scale was the immediate expansion of housing programs for African Americans and improvements in educational establishments that were within the riot areas (Gurr, 1989, pp. 294-296). In addition, the most important outcome of the riots had to do with the concept of electoral mobilization. Following