11th Class- Essay of Martin Luther King

Essay: Evaluate the contribution of either Dr. Marthin Luther King or Malcom X to the Civil Rights Movement.

Martin Luther King was a well- known civil rights leader and activist who had a great influence on American society in the 1950s and 1960s. He did many things to bring US society: equality, and to ensure civil rights for all people who received bad treatements because of race. King believed that African Americans could make protests peacefully, and in this way, he began to adopt some methods, such as speeches, boycotts, protests, and marches. The major contributions of Martin Luther King were, his style of leadership to the African American civil rights movement, the emphasize in the importance of non- violent protests, and to bring publicity to major civil rights activities and efforts.

Martin Luther King was present in almost all civil rights movements. After the incident of Montgomery, King led a boycott against city buses that refused to let blacks sit in the front seats of the bus. This boycott resulted successfull as rules of the bus system changed. In addition to this, he participated in the Washington Peace March on August 1963, were aproximately 250 000 people including whites marched to demand civil rights; is in this march that Martin Luther King made his famous speech called ‘I Have a Dream’ in which he persuades many Americans that they were unjusts with blacks and as a result ciitizens began to put pressure to the president Kennedy. However there was also some opposition to King, people who stated that he wasn’t contributing to this problem at all. Many in the north of USA saw Martin as irrelevant, they said he had focussed in segregation, but problems in the north are others, as poverty in the slums.

African- American Civil Rights Movement lasted from around 1955 to 1968. In order to continue with protests, many Americans including Martin, joined to the Black Power Movement. The intentions of this movement were various. For example, blacks demanded that they should take more responsability, power and control in their own communities; or that the government should pay more attention to social and economic issues, rather than political problems. Despite Martin Luther King was participating of this movement trying to convince US government of some reforms, still many blacks felt that the pace of change was too slow.

On the other hand, many Americans also get frustrated because of the non- violent campaigns proposed by Martin. They felt it was humiliating black people and wasn’t bringing change fast enough. However, to my mind, it was necessary to continue with this kind of protests, because instead it could be generated a major problem, which could involve inocent people. King’s non- violent protests on civil rights were able to make genuine headway in American society.

Although there were some disagreements of American citizens with Martin Luther King thoughts, his leadership led to a successfull civil rights movement that finally achived it’s main goal: equal of rights for all US population. As a demonstration of King’s effort and what he represented during this period of time, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors.