Broadcast: January 23, 2005
ANNCR:
People in America, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.
(Theme)
Today, Shep O'Neal and Warren Scheer finish the story of civil right's
leader, Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior.
(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in nineteen twenty-nine. He
began his university studies when he was fifteen years old, and received a
doctorate degree in religion. He became a preacher at a church in Montgomery,
Alabama.
In nineteen fifty-five, a black woman in Montgomery was arrested for sitting
in the white part of a city bus. Doctor King became the leader of a protest
against the city bus system. It was the first time that black southerners had
united against the laws of racial separation.
VOICE TWO:
At first, the white citizens of Montgomery did not believe that the protest
would work. They thought most blacks would be afraid to fight against racial
separation. But the buses remained empty.
Some whites used tricks to try to end the protest.
They spread false stories about Martin Luther King and other protest leaders.
One story accused Martin of stealing money from the civil rights movement.
Another story charged that protest leaders rode in cars while other
protesters had to walk. But the tricks did not work, and the protest
continued.
VOICE ONE:
Doctor King's wife Coretta described how she and her husband felt during the
protest. She said:"We never knew what was going to happen next. We felt like
actors in a play whose ending we did not know. Yet we felt a part of history.
And we believed we were instruments of the will of God".
The white citizens blamed Doctor King for starting the protest. They thought
it would end if he was in prison or dead. Doctor King was arrested twice on
false charges. His arrests made national news and he was released. But the
threats against his life continued.
VOICE TWO:
The Montgomery bus boycott lasted three hundred eighty-two days. Finally, the
United States Supreme Court ruled that racial separation was illegal in the
Montgomery bus system. Martin Luther King and his followers had won their
struggle. The many months of meetings and protest marches had made victory
possible.
They also gave blacks a new feeling of pride and unity. They saw that
peaceful protest, Mahatma Gandhi's idea of non-violence, could be used as a
tool to win their legal rights.
VOICE ONE:
Life did not return to normal for Doctor King after the protest was over. He
had become well-known all over the country and throughout the world. He often
was asked to speak about his ideas on non-violence. Both black and white
Americans soon began to follow his teachings. Groups were formed throughout
the south to protest peacefully against racial separation.
The civil rights movement spread so fast that a group of black churchmen
formed an organization to guide it. The organization was called the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King became its president.
In his job, Doctor King helped organize many protests in the southern part of
the United States. Blacks demanded to be served in areas where only whites
were permitted to eat. And they rode in trains and buses formerly for whites
only. These protests became known as "freedom rides." Many of the freedom
rides turned violent. Black activists were beaten and arrested. Some were
even killed.
