Often they were given the hardest, ugliest, most menial work, they had to risk their lives and still were called niggers" by their comrades and officers. .
The fight for equal rights continued. In the South, mostly African-Americans of the middle-class took an active part in the struggle for integration in the American society. With the help of the Christian church they managed to start a kind of non-violent revolution which finally made the white people understand the injustice of segregation, so that discrimination by law was finally abolished. The masses in the northern ghettos were frustrated and hopeless because of the social discrimination and de facto segregation they experienced daily. They became more radical and turned to organisations, which preached black pride, black self-esteem, and black nationalism, but also stressed the need for an internationalisation of the fight because of the interdepence of all nations in the modern world. go to top .
Martin Luther King, jr. .
His childhood and youth .
Born on January 15th, 1929 as Michael Luther King in Atlanta, King had the privilege to grow up in a middle-class family. His father was the prominent minister of the Ebenezer Baptist Church at Atlanta's Auburn Avenue, and also a well respected business man, who took an active part in the fight for equal rights and therefore was a member of the local NAACP group as well as the Atlanta Negro Voters League and the Interracial Council for Atlanta. Looking in the future optimistically, he combined protest, accommodation, and self-help, hoping that the black community could reach an end of segregation through non-violence and self-confidence.
But he was also well aware of the fact that the movement towards this aim depended upon the good will of the ruling Whites. Daddy King, as he was called by his family, was an example for Martin, who was deeply influenced by his home and his church, which helped him in the white racist society of the South.