Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6

Today we are reflecting on the chapter in David Levering Lewis’
biography of Martin Luther King on his civil rights struggles on
the sit-ins desegregating the lunch counters and the Freedom Bus
Rides. We reflect on these questions:
Why did Martin Luther King and the other ministers organize the
SCLC, or Southern Christian Leadership Conference? How did the
SCLC differ from the NAACP?
Why did students initiate the lunch counter protests?
How could the KKK set on fire the Freedom Buses carrying
protesting white and black students? Where were the police?
Why did the KKK dynamite numerous black churches?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video.
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Martin Luther King was great television. His captivating oratory quickly catapulted
him to the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. Like the black leaders in the
three preceding generations, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and WEB
Du Bois, Martin Luther King was elevated by the media to iconic status.
The major difference was that Martin Luther King was a newcomer, an upstart.
These three previous generations of black leaders became the Civil Rights
spokesmen for their race because, in part, there were not as many prominent black
leaders who had the education to assume a leadership role. But this was not true
after World War II: many competent and prominent black Civil Rights leaders had
been fighting these battle for years. Although they appreciated the media attention
that followed Martin Luther King wherever he went, they often resented when he
would swoop down to usurp their battles to gain civil rights in their localities.

The first-generation black leader was Frederick
Douglass, who escaped from slavery in the 1830’s
and was a spokesman for the abolitionist movement.

Our biographer David Levering Lewis characterized
the black civil rights movement as a struggle
between the accommodationists and the activists.
Perhaps the first accommodationist position was the
second-generation black leader, Booker T
Washington, while WEB Du Bois, the third-
generation black leader, was an activist.

Booker T Washington argued that blacks could be
unified economically while separated socially. In his
era, he encouraged blacks to learn the trades in
vocational school and had a low opinion of liberal
arts education. He promoted the view that blacks
would be successful economically by their
“industrious labor and economic activity.” His
“success would ultimately win the indulgence of the
white community.”

WEB Du Bois, in contrast, was a proponent of higher
education to prepare the top five percent of blacks
for their leadership roles to win civil rights for their
race.

https://youtu.be/DAEg463i-Tc
WEB Du Bois encouraged “the individual black to actively
demonstrate against his degraded status and refuse to
accept” segregation. “He must develop his intellectual
powers fully to argue his case before his oppressors and
inspire fellow blacks to perfect their intellectual capacities.”

Lewis discusses two other approaches to civil rights.
One is the militant approach, first shown in the Nat
Turner slave rebellion, the belief that “racial
bloodletting would compel” “drastic social change,”
which we also discussed in our Three Generations of
Black Leaders reflection.

Another approach is the racial separatism of Marcus
Garvey, who sought the “formation of an authentic
black culture” and the “wholesale migration of the
race to Africa,” this reflection is included in Lewis’
biography of WEB Du Bois. The Black Panther
Movement and Malcolm X’s Nation of Islam were
movements echoing these themes.

Marcus Garvey, on his wedding day, 1919 / Marcus Garvey as Provisional President of Africa, Harlem parade, 1922

We first reflected on Martin Luther King’s youth and school years, how
his family was involved in both the ministry and civil rights movement of
Atlanta, Georgia. Then we reflected on his role in the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, sparked by the protest of Rosa Parks, which attracted national
media attention and made Martin Luther King an icon of the civil rights
movement.

https://youtu.be/_64FMZ6AlEg https://youtu.be/TuiyFycWE-U

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

After the successes and struggles in Montgomery Bus
Boycott, there was a regional conference for
everyone involved in the civil rights ministry, where
they formed the SCLC, or the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference.

As our biographer Lewis puts it,
“Although none doubted the
efficacy of the NAACP or Urban
League, their deliberations had
persuaded the ministers that an
organization whose focus
would be exclusively Southern,
capitalizing on the national
treasury of grace accumulated
by Martin’s Montgomery
triumph, was desperately
needed.”
NAACP representatives meeting with President John F
Kennedy at White House in 1961

They appointed Martin Luther King as President and Ralph
Abernathy as Treasurer of the SCLC. Since this consumed
most of his time, Martin soon resigned from his post as
minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. However, in
1960 he was appointed co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist
Church, where his father, Martin Luther King Sr, was the
lead pastor. During his lifetime, for better or worse, the
SCLC was seen as an extension of Martin Luther King’s
personality.

President Joe Biden comments on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 2023, in Atlanta.

Unlike in previous generations, now there would be a multiplicity of
national civil rights organizations with differing strategies and focuses,
often cooperating, sometimes competing, often with always chaotic and
tension filled relationships. The NAACP focused on challenging Jim Crow
segregation laws in the courts, the Urban League focused on the gradual
integration of blacks into the managerial class, while SCLC focused on
activism and protests, pressing for speedier desegregation and social
justice, and fighting for black suffrage. To show their willingness to
cooperate, both Martin Luther King individually and the SCLC collectively
formally joined the NAACP. Sometimes the leadership of the NAACP
would object that Martin Luther King was moving too swiftly and
aggressively.

White House meeting with Civil Rights Leaders, 1963, Front Row: Martin Luther King, Robert F Kennedy, Roy
Wilkins or Benjamin Mays, VP Lyndon Baines Johnson, Walter P. Reuther, Whitney Young, A Philip Randolph

One of the first actions of the SCLC was to ask President
Eisenhower to deliver a policy speech requesting quicker
implementation of the Supreme Court Brown decision to
desegregate public schools with all deliberate speed,
asking that Vice President Richard Nixon tour the south
and support their efforts. This request was ironic, since
later Nixon would implement the Southern Strategy to go
slow on civil rights, and that would gradually shift the
Deep South from being a Democratic stronghold to
becoming a Republican stronghold.

President
Eisenhower
addressing
meeting of
NAACP, 1954

The Republican President Eisenhower reluctantly
supported various civil rights issues. He dispatched
federal troops to enforce the desegregation of the
schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. When Governor
Orval Faubus opposed the enforcement of the
Supreme Court Brown decision, the general in
Eisenhower could not permit him to tolerate this
insubordination.

Soldiers escort black students to Central High School in Little Rock
in 1957, after the governor of Arkansas tried to enforce segregation.

Under Eisenhower’s administration, a
tame Civil Rights Act was passed in 1957,
“the first of its kind since 1875.” As Lewis
writes, this “created a Civil Rights
Commission empowered to gather
information on voting rights violations and
authorized the quiescent Justice
Department to initiate injunctive relief in
cases of proven voting irregularities.” This
legislation included stiff punishments for
“individuals crossing state lines to foment
violence,” which was a Southern tactic to
oppose civil rights protests.
Eisenhower Signing the Civil Rights Act of 1957

Martin Luther King was vigorously
campaigning for voting rights. In his
first national address, he proclaimed,
“Give us the ballot. Give us the ballot
and we will no longer have to worry
the federal government about our
basic rights.” “Give us the ballot and
we will fill the legislature with men of
goodwill. Give us the ballot and we
will get the people judges who love
mercy. Give us the ballot and we will
quietly, lawfully, and nonviolently,
without rancor or bitterness,
implement” the US Supreme Court
Brown decision.
https://youtu.be/f5nPNnvDBCY
https://youtu.be/JeRCM4PAqPk

Ensuring that blacks have the right to vote was the key civil rights
objective in the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War.
The movement took a breather after the Montgomery struggle.
During this time Martin Luther King attended the 1957
independence celebrations of the black English Commonwealth
African nation of Ghana. Here he conferred with Richard Nixon,
who also attended. Martin was also invited to consult with the
Prime Minister of India, which had also recently gained
independence from Great Britain with nonviolent means as
practiced by Mahatma Gandhi.

At this time, Martin Luther King proclaimed:
“It is my hope that as the Negro plunges
deeper into the quest for freedom and
justice he will plunge even deeper into the
philosophy of nonviolence. The Negro all
over the South must” “say to his white
brother: ‘We will match your capacity to
inflict suffering with our capacity to endure
suffering. We will meet your physical force
with soul force. We will not hate you, but we
will not obey your evil laws. We will soon
wear you down by pure capacity to suffer.’”
He compared the nonviolent struggle with
the Agape love of the New Testament.
Statue of Gandhi at MLK National Park, Atlanta, GA

Lunch Counter Protests in the Deep South

In that era, blacks were not permitted to eat lunch with white customers at lunch
counters in department and variety stores. In 1960 college students, black and
white, protested in North Carolina by sitting at lunch counters, and if they were not
served, they would simply stay to protest. These sit-ins spread to Tennessee, home
of the leading black Fisk University, led by future civil rights leaders Marion Barry
and John Lewis.
Then the lunch counter sit-ins, planned by the future civil rights leader Julian Bond,
Martin Luther King, and others, were organized in Atlanta, Georgia. In total, these
sit-ins spread to fourteen cities in five Southern states. To organize the movement
nationally, the SCLC provided the initial funding to found the independent SNCC, or
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. There were about two hundred
delegates to their first national meeting, including black and white students, and
members of the SCLC and CORE. CORE was a civil rights organization founded with
both black and white members in 1942.

Diorama of Lunch
Counter Sit-Down
Protests, National Civil
Rights Museum,
Memphis, Tennessee

A section of the lunch
counter now appears in
the display of the
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of
American History.

At the conference, SNCC issued a student manifesto,
An Appeal for Human Rights, that demanded
“community action in education, housing, jobs,
voting, law enforcement, hospitals, and
entertainment facilities, including restaurants,
movies, and concerts.”

Civil Rights
protesters,
Woolworth's
Sit-In, 1960,
Durham, NC

Civil Rights protesters, Woolworth's Sit-In, 1960, Durham, NC
Martin Luther King’s
keynote speech
recommended a
program of
selective buying
and boycotts of
businesses to
encourage
desegregation and
civil rights, and the
“formation of an
army of volunteers
prepared to accept
prison sentences in
lieu of fines and
bail.”

Martin Luther King
emphasized that
nonviolence was central
to the struggle. He
proclaimed, “there is
another element that
makes our resistance and
nonviolence truly
meaningful. That element
is reconciliation.” “The
tactics of nonviolence
without the spirit of
nonviolence may become
a new kind of violence.”
Sit-in participants at Walgreens drugstore in Nashville, Tennessee, 1960

After the year-end 1960 conference of the SNCC,
where Martin was the keynote speaker, both he and
thirty-five other members, mostly students, were
arrested for trespassing for their Atlanta lunch
counter sit-ins earlier in the year. Although they
refused bond, the mayor of Atlanta arranged a two-
month truce, promising their demands would be
considered, releasing them from jail.

Diorama of
Lunch
Counter
Sit-Down
Protests,
National
Civil Rights
Museum,
Memphis,
Tennessee

Martin had been arrested for a minor traffic violation
previously, and it was now claimed that his participation in
the lunch counter protests was a violation of his bail
agreement. There were concerns that he would be lynched
when transported to the jail, protests swamped the
Eisenhower administration. His opponent for the
Presidency, John F Kennedy, interceded on behalf of
Martin, who was granted bail. This intervention may have
been a decisive element is his winning the 1960
Presidential Election.

Benjamin Cowins and other protestors during a sit-in at McCrory's lunch counter in Tallahassee, 1961

Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation
Freedom Rider Greyhound bus burns after being firebombed by KKK mob at Anniston, Alabama, 1961

CORE had been fighting to end segregation in interstate travel
since 1947, when it had sponsored a two-week effort when black
protestors attempted to ride the segregated interstate buses,
which resulted in both arrests and jail time. In 1961, they revived
this protest, sponsoring Freedom Rides by black and white
students and activists riding interstate buses. Although CORE was
the primary organizer, Martin Luther King and the SCLC
participated in the protests. Due to his organizational
responsibilities, Martin did not directly participate in the
demonstrations, which drew criticism, but Ralph Abernathy did
ride the Freedom Buses.

The first two buses carrying the Freedom black and
white protestors boarded two buses in Washington
DC, bound for Alabama. One bus was set on fire by
angry whites. When the other bus reached
Birmingham, Alabama, the Freedom Riders were
beaten severely by white thugs while Bull Conner and
the police looked on, and while the television
cameras rolled. The bus companies refused to carry
them further to their destination.

Freedom Rider bus fire-bombed by KKK in Anniston, Alabama, 1961

When another group of Freedom Riders departing from
Tennessee arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, they were
initially threatened by a mob of three hundred angry
whites, which swelled to nearly a thousand. John Lewis of
the SNCC, a future congressman, a leading journalist, and a
special White House representative were among those
injured in the ensuing violence. While the mobs rioted, the
television cameras continued to roll, and public opinion
shifted.

Freedom Rider
bus fire-bombed
by KKK in
Anniston,
Alabama, 1961

Immediately, Martin rushed to
Montgomery, as did seven
hundred marshals sent by
Attorney General Robert
Kennedy and hundreds of
Alabama National Guardsmen
sent by the governor. Martin
spoke eloquently at a local
church, “The law may not be able
to make a man love me, but it
can keep him from lynching me.”

This was not true in the early years of WEB Du Bois
and during the lifetime of Booker T Washington,
when lynching was rampant.

The SCLC leadership thought that the NAACP moved
too slow and was too conciliatory, and the SNCC
leadership thought the same of the SCLC. But in
September 1961, the ICC, or Interstate Commerce
Commission, abolished segregation aboard buses
and terminal facilities, including bus stations.

Freedom
Rider bus
fire-bombed
by KKK in
Anniston,
Alabama,
1961

Was Albany Struggle a Success or a Failure?

The Freedom Rides and other protests were continued in Albany,
Georgia. Our biographer Lewis reports that many at the time
thought that the inconclusiveness of these protests was a failure,
that they weren’t sufficiently focused, that there was insufficient
coordination between the competing civil rights organizations.
But they were a success, since by being involved, Martin Luther
King attracted media coverage. Success is grounded in
persistence, if you do not give up, you succeed. And they learned
from their struggles and tactical errors. The problem was that
the media coverage was lacking a truly villainous foe in Albany.

Police Chief Pritchett
announced, “We, the duly
constituted authorities
and citizens of this city,
met nonviolence with
nonviolence and we are,
indeed, proud of the
outcome.” “We killed
them with kindness.” This
was a foe that Martin had
not encountered, he was
unsure whether to be
hostile or conciliatory. Freedom Riders arrested, Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, GA

The black and white Freedom Riders, in protest, sat in the white
section of the bus arriving in Albany. Several hundred protestors
welcomed their arrival, and they insisted on sitting in the whites-
only section of the bus terminal. Pritchett snapped and threw
them in jail, which sparked several hundred activists to protest at
city hall, leading to the arrest of five hundred protestors. Martin
Luther King was also jailed when he protested, declining bail,
and the number of arrests swelled to seven hundred. Although
jail conditions were harsh and there was abuse, the arresting
police officers behaved with restraint and civility, which did not
make for good television.

A mob of racists
beats Freedom
Riders in
Birmingham,
Alabama, 1961

In December, a truce was called, Martin accepted bail, and
all demonstrators were released on bail. The ruling of the
ICC took effect the previous month, ending segregation in
the bus terminals. But libraries and cinemas remained
segregated. The city agreed to discuss civil rights matters
the following January after the city government was
installed, and mass demonstrations would end until then.
This compromise was a tactical defeat for the movement.

Freedom Riders National Monument, Anniston, Alabama

A boycott of white business was announced, but it was not
effective because the blacks had limited purchasing power
in Albany. A city bus boycott was also announced, which
eventually bankrupted the bus company, ending the city
bus service altogether. Martin announced a campaign of
civil disobedience, and that summer protesting blacks
sought service at lunch counters, movies, libraries, parks,
bowling alleys, and attempted to attend white church
services, which was a final insult for white Southerners.

Civil Rights protesters at Woolworth's Sit-In, Durham, NC, 1960

There were many arrests. A pregnant Mrs King was kicked
unconscious when she attempted to bring food to friends being
held at the prison camp. In response, two thousand young blacks
rioted, battling the police with bricks and bottles. The governor
called up twelve thousand national guardsmen to quell the
disturbances. Following Gandhi’s example, Martin responded to
this outbreak of violence by curtailing the protests for a week to
cool the temperature, which the SNCC leaders objected to. Then
Martin once again joined the protests and was arrested, and then
subsequently was released.

The 1951 Freedom Riders
are represented by a
stamp featuring a work
by May Stevens

The Ku Klux Klan then dynamited four black churches
in nearby towns, destroying or heavily damaging
them. Three of these churches were rebuilt using
funds from the AFL-CIO and northern liberals, but
racial conditions deteriorated. Public parks, public
pools, and libraries were either closed down or
privatized to avoid desegregation. One commentator
observed that “Albany was successful only if the goal
was to go to jail.”

But in his next battle in Birmingham, Alabama would
make for better television because Martin Luther
King faced an implacable and foolishly violent
antagonist, the infamous Jim Crow Sheriff, Bull
O’Conner, whom we just met in the Freedom Riders
protests.

After the Birmingham struggle, there was the March
on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered
his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the
Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC. After that, there
was the bloody march on Selma, his fight for more
equitable housing in Chicago, and finally, when his
life was cut short by his assassination in Memphis.

The author, David Levering Lewis, was planning to
write the biography of Martin Luther King when he
was assassinated. It was initially published sixteen
months later and quickly became the classic
biography of this Civil Rights icon. We also
supplemented his account with the Wikipedia
articles for CORE. We discussed his biography in
greater depth in our reflection on his youth and
school years.

The professor in our Yale Lecture Notes on Civil Rights
also discusses the Emmitt Till lynching, the Little Rock
school integration efforts, and the Freedom Rider
protesters seeking to desegregate the interstate buses,
and other struggles we will soon study, in the context of
other protests in the Civil Rights era of the Sixties.
Lewis also wrote the definitive biography for WEB Du
Bois.

https://www.meetup.com/Reflections/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqDkfFbWhXOnzdjp__YZtg/

Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6

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Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6