Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. "The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness." Address at the Golden Anniversary Conference of the National Urban League, New York, NY, 6 Sept. 1960.
Quoted in the Court’s notes of the meeting. At the time the justices were split 5-4 with the majority reluctant to overturn segregation. They tended to be much older and from the South. Jackson was prescient. Shortly thereafter Chief Justice Vincent passed away and Earl Warren replaced him. The 5-4 majority was for desegregation now. However, Warren negotiated with the minority and finally produced a unanimous opinion against legal segregation. As Jackson had predicted, “it had come.”
Arkansas Governor Faubus ordered the national guard to prevent Black students from integrating Central High School in Little Rock. President Eisenhower was a man of action and not rhetoric and his lack of firm public statements overlooked an opportunity to use the Presidential “bully pulpit” and exercise his moral leadership and authority. Armstrong was irate at Eisenhower for appearing to do nothing and say nothing. See {615852}. When Eisenhower did enforce the court order and used Federal troops, Armstrong sent him this congratulatory telegram. His reference to walking into the schools was in support of many who suggested that the best thing the President could have done was to personally take one of the Black students by the hand and walk into the school with him or her. With the mood of the Southern racists, such an act was potentially very risky for the President and it is not known whether of not the President and his staff ever considered such an act.
In the middle of WWII where Black soldiers were fighting and dying on the war front, there were fears of racists that the Blacks would return and demand full equality and an end to segregation. There were threats in the South of armed attacks against any returning serviceman who would push for desegregation.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the American civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of early civil rights activist Martin Luther King Sr.
