Martin Luther King Jr.

C on August 28th, 1963. It was to show their support for a Civil Rights Bill. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his speech to the civil rights supporters. The "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered in front of the giant sculpture of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, who became famous for how it expressed the ideals of the civil rights movement (King 7). .
             President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights law after the big march. President Kennedy committed himself to a civil rights bill, but was assassinated in Dallas.
             In 1965, King and other black leaders wanted to push beyond social integration, now guaranteed under the previous year's civil rights law, to political rights, mainly .
             Southern blacks' rights to register and vote. King picked a tough Alabama town to tackle: Selma, where only 1% of eligible black voters were registered to vote. The violence, .
             the march, the excitement all contributed to the passage of the second landmark civil rights act of the decade. Even though there was horrendous violence, rev. king announced .
             that as a "matter of conscience and in an attempt to arouse the deepest concern of the nation," he was "compelled" to lead another march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (King 19). .
             The four-day, 54-mile march started on the afternoon of Sunday, March 21, 1965, with some 3500 marchers led by two Nobel prize winners, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. And Ralph bunche, then UN Under secretary for special political affairs. In the march, whites, Negroes, clergymen and beatniks, old and young, walked side by side. President .
             Johnson made sure they had plenty of protection this time with 1000 military police, 1900 federalized Alabama national guardsmen, and platoons of u.s. Marshals and FBI men. When the marchers reached the capital of Alabama, they were to have presented a petition to then governor George Wallace protesting voting discrimination. However, when they arrived, the governor's aides came out and said, "the capital is closed today.