Martin Luther King and equal rights, what have we done since?

Would you have the courage to enter a segregated dinner, sit at the counter, and order?
Would you volunteer to be a freedom rider and travel to the South to test the new laws and face angry mobs? Would you march and be ready to die facing an open bigot City Hall and police department?
What have we done with the rights handed to us?
Would you die for your beliefs like 37 -years-old NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, murdered outside his Mississippi home, or like the 3 young students (James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24) who had been working to register black voters in Mississippi. We are under the impression that slavery and segregation have been abolished.  Is it?
Today's Urban Cities are the new social and economic face of segregation. It is another way to separate those who have from those who have not. The new slavery is the hopelessness of the urban youth, the separation between poor urban public education and everywhere else.  What would it take to wake up from the stupor we are all encouraged to live in. We are so detached from violence and abuse that we let our children play games, promoting it to desensitize us. As long As we are not directly affected by our comfortable way of life, Uncle Sam can do anything he wants, no question asked.
Segregation is much more subtle and much more difficult to discern. But let us not fool ourselves; segregation still lives.

A Moment to Remember:

Martin Luther King. Did not create the civil rights movement, but the civil rights movement made Martin Luther King.
The culmination of legal, political, social, economic, and cultural segregation in the United States and mainly in the South made the perfect platform for the Black Struggle to get its momentum. The black movement was a broad coalition of movements.  The civil rights coalitions were a coalition of several progressive and moderate groups.

On the right was the Urban League their strategy was the use of big business for social reforms,
On the Left of the right is the NAACP witch worked with the legal system.
In the center is the SCLC they used non violent civil disobedience.
To the left is CORE (Congress Racial Equality)
The far left the SNIC (Student Non Violence Coordinating Community)

The movement that would change America's face began in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus.

E.D. Nixon of the NAACP called on a young minister named Martin Luther King to lead a movement against the bus company and Jim Crow Laws. 

Rosa Park
King urged the boycott of the bus company and an important business district.  He became the voice of a whole segment of Americans who were denied the American dream and its way of life.
A little over a year after the Montgomery bus protest, a mandate found that bus segregation was legally and sociologically invalid.

Martin Luther King, Charles Steele, and Fred Shuttlesworth established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in September 1957, of which King was made the first president. 

The SCLC  mandate is the black vote rights of Americans in the deep South.  Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, were among the most racist states in the nation. A reign of violence and terror was conducted on the black Americans of the South. In 1963 during a civil rights protest in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor used fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.     

There was nothing romantic about nonviolent protests. One had to show courage and restraint to march or picket, facing many injuries and abuses.

In August of 1963, before 200,000 people congregated at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King delivered his famous: "I Have a Dream" speech.

Under King's leadership, the SCLC took on racial and national issues. In July 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed, which prohibits discrimination of all kinds, and in 1965 ratification of the correct voting act was signed.  By this time, Martin Luther King was an influential national figure.

 

   1963 JFK Assassination                                                              1965 Malcolm X Assassination
As long as King's movement was about racial and segregation issues, he was not a significant threat to the administration. Bus's proses were more and more directly critical of the FBI, the CIA, Johnson's Administration, and foreign and domestic policies. He openly opposed the war in Vietnam. He spoke of the homeless, the poor work conditions, and the poor wages. His rally was no longer for the black American's needs but for all poor people. He took on the social and economic improvement of Americans of all races, colors, and faith. He claimed that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, every human being had the right to decent shelter, free education, public school, and universities;... By 1967-68, a raging and active smear campaign was launched to destroy King's credibility and the movement he represented. King, his most powerful figure, had to die to stop the coalition of movements.

"We must prevent the rise of a "black messiah" who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a "messiah"; he is the martyr of the movement today.  Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammad all aspire to the position,  Elijah Muhammad is less of a treat because of his age.  King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed " obedience" to "white, liberal doctrines" (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism.Carmichael has the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way
"Black Nationalist Hate Group{ Cointelpro FBI)

By the summer of 1967, American cities erupted in violence and civil disobedience. Talking for a long time about the poor people's alliances, King was working on a march to the capital and only left once something was done about the racial and class-dominant part of the country. He was talking about the redistribution of America's wealth. In 1967 Memphis Sanitation Workers were on strike after 2 workers died from a defective truck accident. The Workers demanded, among other things, better wages, workman's comp, and better working conditions.  Their petitions fell on deaf ears by Mayor Loeb and the city council. AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), International President Jerry Wurf arrives and says the strike can end only when their demands are met.  The NAACP organizes boycotts and vigils. Picketing and march.

It is during a peaceful march that police attack strikers using a mace. Urged by Memphis's black ministers to support the strike, King made time in his already heavy schedule to make an appearance. His staff warned him that the situation in Memphis was too volatile to resolve peacefully. Nevertheless, he made the trip.  On March 28, King led a peaceful march in Memphis when police moved into the crowds with nightsticks, mace, tear gas, and gunfire. A 16-year-old boy, Larry Payne, was shot to death.  State legislature authorizes a 7 p.m. curfew, and 4,000 National Guardsmen move in.  The St Louis Globe-Democrat, a sounding board for the FBI, accuses King of plotting a race war.  
On April 3, 1968, Dr. King returned to Memphis; he took a room at the Windsor/ Lorraine rather than the usual Holiday Inn. He is then moved from the first floor to the second floor. In the days of legal segregation, the Windsor / Lorraine was one of the few hotels in Memphis open to black guests.
That evening at a rally, he delivered the "I've been to the Mountaintop" address.
The next day, early in the morning, while greeting his supporters from the hotel's balcony, a sniper, later captured and identified as James Earl Ray, shot Dr. King to death.
What have we done with the rights handed to us? Would you stand up to fight and die for your beliefs?