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In January of 1957, after his victory in Montgomery, King became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King preached non-violent resistance. He use similar tactics used by Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi and King were both inspired by Transcendentalist thinker Henry David Thoreau s On Civil Disobedience. King attempted to gain support up North as he traveled there and preached at several Northern churches. On February 1, 1960, four black North Carolina freshmen at Greensboro Agricultural and Technical College started a movement to integrate lunch counters across America. The students sat at an all-white table knowing that they would not receive service. However, they continued to sit until they would receive service. Many students joined them in their protest. The use of that resistance gained popularity across the nation. Six months later, the sit-in was successful, and the merchants agreed to serve integrated masses. Variations of the sit-in began to emerge known as kneel-ins for churches, read-ins for libraries, wade-ins for beaches, and sleep-ins for motels. The tactic of sit-ins was organized and spread by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Many blacks were beaten and harassed by white teenagers for taking place in such activities. Students formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to better organize the sit-ins in 1961. The SNCC and the SCLC worked together to help get black citizens registered to vote and teach them how to harness their voting power.

CORE, meanwhile, went out to help desegregate the nation s interstate highway system. A group of both white and black members went out on buses throughout the South. They were deemed freedom riders as their travels resulted in much public opposition. The riders were often severely injured and attacked by Southern residents. The ride ended up in the arrest of three hundred riders. However, the protest showed that despite the Supreme Court ruling, the interstate travel was still segregated. The Interstate Commerce Commission followed up in November 1961 by banning segregation on interstate travel.

Blacks still faced segregation in colleges despite Supreme Court rulings. In 1962, James Meredith applied to the University of Mississippi after which he was not allowed to attend because he was black. Meredith sued and the Supreme Court agreed on behalf of Meredith and said that the University of Mississippi must allow Meredith to attend their college. The Mississippi Governor attempted to block Meredith s enrollment, but Kennedy sent federal marshals to ensure that Meredith enrolled. In 1963, Governor George C. Wallace attempted to block the admittance of black students into the University of Alabama. Kennedy, however, sent in troops again and allowed the black students to attend the college.

Also in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. set on a crusade to stop the segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. After being invited by Fred Shuttlesworth, King set out a campaign in Birmingham that would help to dismantle the segregation. Demonstrations began on April 3, 1963 and continued for several months. During this time, King was imprisoned where he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Eventually, the protesters included children in their protest marches, calling it the Children s Campaign. The police chief of Birmingham Eugene Bull Connor ordered the police to stop the protests. Kennedy initially advocated that both sides reach a solution. The businessmen who were losing significant profits agreed to desegregate lunch counters and hire black workers. This action elicited hatred from the Ku Klux Klan which led to an increase in violence. Kennedy eventually sent federal troops in to enforce the desegregation. This event leads Kennedy to propose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The campaign in Birmingham was similar to the one in Albany, Georgia in which the SCLC, SNCC, and CORE organized massive sit-ins to end discrimination in 1961-1962.

On August 28, 1963, King and the SCLC plan a march on Washington at the time when Congress was pressed to decide the fate of the Civil Rights Bill. Over two-hundred and fifty thousand people met at the Lincoln Monument in demonstration. At this point, King delivered his I Have a Dream speech. This march received more extensive media coverage than any other event in American history at the time. However, the march sparked much opposition again as two months after the march, Medgar Evers was killed in his driveway by white supremacists. The killer escaped conviction in many trials. Also, on September 15, four girls who attended Sunday School were killed by a bomb planted by segregationalists in Birmingham s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Nevertheless, these movements gained support from such entertainers as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Harry Belafonte. Even four hundred members of Congress came out to support the march.

Also, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. This proposal by Kennedy was really his first Civil Rights action. Despite his actions to help Civil Rights activists, Kennedy merely did those actions out of support of the Federal court rulings. Kennedy s administration prior to the Civil Rights Act was purely reactionary as they never acted as a catalyst for change. Lyndon B. Johnson had to push the proposal through Congress as Kennedy was assassinated before the Act was passed. The Civil Rights Act was called the strongest legislation since Reconstruction. The legislation prohibited segregation and

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