Martin Luther King Jr. was from 1955 until his death in 1968 the leader of the US civil rights movement. King believed that use of non-violent protests was the most effective means of fighting against a racist and unjust society. King insisted that only God’s law and love conquered all and he encouraged the use of non-violent direct action in order to challenge societal wrongs.
King studied and followed the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and was particularly fascinated by the Gandhi’s principle of peace known as Satyagraha which means ‘the pursuit of truth’ or ‘insistence on truth’. King could identify with Gandhi’s teachings since he felt that most of the teachings taught by Gandhi related with his Christian beliefs. For example the biblical philosophies of ‘turn the other cheek’ or ‘love your enemies’. King used those philosophies to advocate for non-violence resistance. King believed that a philosophy that is based on love was more a powerful and an effective social force that could
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used was Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. King called for a city wide boycott of public transport after an African American woman was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a bus to white person since the public transportation had segregated buses for the whites and the blacks. Since the blacks used the public transportation more than the whites, the entire transportation system ran huge loses since the black residents were the majority boycotters. The bus boycott which started in December 1955 lasted over a year and in June 1956, the laws in Montgomery that allowed segregated buses were found to be unconstitutional by the federal court but the ruling was appealed and segregation continued until December 1956 when the US supreme court upheld the ruling that the laws that allowed segregated buses were unconstitutional. This is when the over one year boycott was called off and this marked one of the civil rights movement’s