Assess the work of a significant figure in the campaign for racial equality

Martin Luther King Jr
1. Influenced by Rosa Parks
  1. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white man on a bus. She was expected to due to the Jim Crow laws enforced in some American states at the time which meant black people has less rights than white people.
    1. She was consequently arrested and fined, which sparked outrage among the black community.
      1. This led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott - black citizens avoided using the buses, instead walking to work or getting lifts in cars. This went on for over a year until the bus company could no longer handle the loss of income and therefore ended segregation on bus services.
2. MLKJ was also influenced by his own father
  1. He witnessed his fathers protests against segregation, such as the time when Mr King refused to listen to a traffic policeman after being patronisingly referred to as a 'boy'
  2. His father stormed out of a shoe store with him after being told they'd have to "move to the rear of the store to be served" by a shoe clerk.
3. Martin Luther King Jr was well educated within religion, with a Bachelor of Divinity and a degree in Philosophy
  1. This made his interpretations of the Bible more believable, hence why so many listened to him
  2. Though in his early life he doubted the religion he was raised in, King later realised that, to him, the church offered the most assuring way to answer his 'inner urge to serve humanity'
    1. Martin Luther King Jr's Christian beliefs influenced him to participate in the Civil Rights Movement in order to gain rights for black civilians in the USA
      1. Jesus spoke about the Golden Rule, in which He stated that we should treat others as we would like to be treated.
        The Bible states that Christians should "love thy neighbour" and that "God created humans in His own image." This made MLKJ wonder why America was so divided. The lack of rights for black people certainly contradicted these statements in the Bible, so he decided to use them in order to inspire the American people to fight for Civil Rights.
4. On a bus returning from a school trip, MLKJ and his teacher were asked to stand so a white passenger could sit down. King was about to argue, but his teacher informed him that not standing was a criminal offence, so he did as he was told.
  1. This angered Martin and was another inspiration for his future participation in the Civil Rights Movement.
5. His non-violent approach was inspired by Gandhi. Ahimsa = non-violence - to hurt another being is to hurt oneself.
Martin Luther King Jr inspired an abundance of progress within the Civil Rights Movement. His marches on Washington and Birminghamcaused many laws and acts to be passed that enabled black people to gain more rights in America.
1. He also influenced students to join together and fight for civil rights through sit-ins at segregated lunch counters
Equality = ensuring individuals or groups of individuals are treated fairly and equally and no less favourably, specific to their needs, including areas of race, gender, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation or age.Promoting equality should remove discrimination in all of the aforementioned areas.
Racism in the USA was rife up until the Civil Rights Movement
1. 1919 lynching of Will Brown: He was accused of sexual assault, which angered many. A protest formed outside of the court he was being held in, and the judge agreed to hand Brown over to the protestors. The protestors consequently set him alight, shot, beat and lynched him.
2. 1951 lynching of Emmett Till: A 14 year old boy wolf-whistled at a woman in a store. He was consequently brutally beaten and murdered. Till's mother insisted that his coffin stay open during his funeral, so that everybody could see the atrocities done to him for such a minor action.
3. These two lynchings emphasise how ruthlessly black people were treated, and emphasises how much America needed and benefitted from the Civil Rights Movement and the work of Martin Luther King Jr
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - MLKJ
1. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLKJ
One weakness to Martin Luther King Jr's work was the fact that he contradicted himself by agreeing that sometimes non-violent protest could not always solve every problem.
1. Thus, many people turned to Malcolm X, as he believed that violence was the best and only way to succeed in the Civil Rights Movement.

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Assess the work of a significant figure in the campaign for racial equality

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