Martin Luther King’s Policy of Peaceful Protest
Martin Luther King’s policy of peaceful protest was important because it led to public sympathy of the way black Americans were treated by white Americans an example of this would be the Birmingham campaign (1963), Kennedy said he was sickened by the images of violence and the soviet media used 1/5 of their time to broadcast on it. Other campaigns that where peaceful and effective which were set up or supported by king include The Selma campaign, Montgomery Bus Boycott, the march on Washington, the Birmingham campaign, king supported freedom rides. Some campaigns failed through peaceful protest such as the Albany movement as Laurie Pritchett stopped media attention by treating the protestors with respect. Kings policy of peaceful protest wasn’t the only reason for the successes of the civil rights movement also presidential action helped. The effect of the policy of peaceful protest was good as it provided media attention and created public sympathy for the way black Americans were treated by white Americans it also gained support for the civil rights movement from presidents. The Birmingham campaign was better than the Albany campaign because they learnt from their mistakes, for example Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor would react with violence and create media attention whereas Laurie Pritchett treated them with respect and stopped media attention also in Birmingham they had better targets such as desegregate public places, schools and employment. In Birmingham children were used to campaign as this was supposed to lead to people in Birmingham being embarrassed because their jails would be full of young people, the police attacked them with high pressure fire hoses and they arrested and imprisoned 1,300 black American children, this led to criticisms of King for using children. This shows that while peaceful protest was sometimes effective some of the methods could lead to criticisms of the civil rights campaigners. The images of violence that Kennedy saw ‘sickened him’