Tribute

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is a United States holiday marking the birthdate of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of King's birthday, January 15. It is one of three United States federal holidays to commemorate an individual person.

110th Anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision - Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Mr. Justice Brown delivered the opinion of the Court....

"The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, that separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of States where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced."

The Civil Rights Era

The post-war era marked a period of unprecedented energy against the second class citizenship accorded to African Americans in many parts of the nation. Resistance to racial segregation and discrimination with strategies such as civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, marches, protests, boycotts, "freedom rides," and rallies received national attention as newspaper, radio, and television reporters and cameramen documented the struggle to end racial inequality. There were also continuing efforts to legally challenge segregation through the courts.

Success crowned these efforts: the Brown decision in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 helped bring about the demise of the entangling web of legislation that bound blacks to second class citizenship. One hundred years after the Civil War, blacks and their white allies still pursued the battle for equal rights in every area of American life. While there is more to achieve in ending discrimination, major milestones in civil rights laws are on the books for the purpose of regulating equal access to public accommodations, equal justice before the law, and equal employment, education, and housing opportunities. African Americans have had unprecedented openings in many fields of learning and in the arts. The black struggle for civil rights also inspired other liberation and rights movements, including those of Native Americans, Latinos, and women, and African Americans have lent their support to liberation struggles in Africa.

Brown v. the Board of Education

In the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federally-sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools on May 17, 1954. The Supreme Court judges ruled unanimously that, ?separate education facilities are inherently unequal.? Brown became a groundbreaking case because it overturned the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which declared ?separate but equal facilities? constitutional and it also provided the legal foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Widely perceived as a revolutionary decision, Brown was in fact the culmination of changes both in the Court and in the strategies of integration?s most powerful legal champion, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

General Information

This "act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution" was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified. In those years, African Americans in the South faced tremendous obstacles to voting, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions to deny them the right to vote. They also risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register to vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and they had very little, if any, political power, either locally or nationally. Examples of a few techniques used to disenfranchise African Americans to deny them a right to vote, follow...

Malcolm's Contribution to Black Voting Rights

Nearly a century after the 15th Amendment granted the right to vote to Blacks, tactics which included "opening" the office to Blacks only a few hours a month, and refusing to process the voter registration applications of the few who managed to obtain them, ensured that Black political participation would not gain footing...

House Approves Voting Rights Act Reauthorization

On June 13th, the U.S. House passed HR 9, the Voting Rights Reauthorization Act, by the overwhelming margin of 390-33. This act would extend key provisions of the original act that protect against discrimination in voting as well as continue to provide the foundation for the movement for fair representation. As a member of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, FairVote joins a large number of civil rights organizations, religious groups, labor unions and large corporations in applauding the House vote.

Links

Permission to use pictures and quotes from Dr. King granted, courtesy of The King Center.

Service speech: http://www.thekingcenter.org/prog/bc/get-involved/