PressTV-Martin Luther King: A civil rights icon

Fifty years ago, on April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Since then, the human rights activist’s name has become synonymous with the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Dr. King was only 24 years old when he led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott—a major event in the history of African American Civil Rights Movement.

Only two years later in 1957, he became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which he helped found the same year.

As the leader of SCLC, Dr. King formed a large desegregation coalition in Albany, Georgia in 1962, and fought for equal rights.

The movement, however, was unsuccessful as it was met with a strong opposition within city officials. But King was never discouraged by the “limited success,” as he himself called it.

In 1963, he helped organize the nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, and then proceeded to arrange the March on Washington the same…

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