Established by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1957, the SCLC was committed to nonviolent action to achieve social and political justice for all African Americans.
The SCLC grew out of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, during 1955 and 1956. King wanted a permanent organization to carry on the successful fight in other areas. The SCLC inspired many black leaders to believe that nonviolent protests, such as the boycott, might succeed in battles against segregation. Its approach was therefore different from that of the National Association lor the Advancement ol Colored People (NAACP), which relied almost entirely on legal actions. The SCLC wanted to end segregation more quickly than seemed possible through the NAACP’s methods.
While King headed the new organization, other important civil rights leaders were involved. Ralph Abernathy was an ordained Baptist minister from Alabama who was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, and he succeeded King after his assassination as the president of the SCLC. Jesse Jackson was another civil rights activist who devoted his time to the Civil Rights movement.
The SCLC was primarily located in the South. It conducted leadership training programs, citizen education projects, and voter registration drives. In promoting desegregation, the organization continually promoted nonviolent protests. The SCLC was most noted for its many marches. The first was in Albany, Georgia, in 1961,
Civil rights leaders (left to right): Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Attorney General Robert Kennedy; Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP; and Vice President Lyndon Johnson, after a special White House conference on civil rights, 1963 (Library of Congress)
In which activists protested the segregated public facilities in the city. This confrontation failed when the community arrested the protesters, who failed to bring about the desired change.
In early 1963, however, the protests worked in Birmingham, Alabama. While in Alabama, the SCLC encouraged children and teenagers to join in the confrontations. In response, Eugene “Bull” Connor, the local police commissioner, released dogs and used high-pressure water hoses on the protesters. Television brought these scenes of nonviolent protesters being abused into homes around the country, horrifying viewers, and helping the Civil Rights movement to gain momentum. The protesters eventually negotiated with local Birmingham officials and won their battle when the city desegregated restrooms, drinking fountains, lunch counters, and fitting rooms throughout the metropolitan area.
The biggest march that the SCLC organized came on August 28, 1963, with the March on Washington led by King and others. More than 200,000 people gathered that day to show support for the Civil Rights movement, and to press for passage of a bill mandating the integration of public accommodations that was bottled up in Congress. At this march, King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which outlined his goals for the Civil Rights movement.
Another well-known demonstration led by the SCLC occurred in March 1965, with a march planned from Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery to demand black voting rights. Just outside of Selma, the protesters were met by police and counterdemonstrators telling them to go home. When the marchers refused, the police started to beat and tear gas the demonstrators. Again, this was televised, and the event came to be known as Bloody Sunday. The upheaval prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to react. In a speech televised nationwide, he spoke against the violence that the nation saw, and urged the protestors to continue their march. The SCLC also successfully petitioned federal district judges for an order barring police interference with their march. The marchers arrived in Montgomery five days later, to hear once again King’s powerful words against segregation and restrictions on voting rights. This march influenced Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965, banning the use of literacy tests and other voting restrictions against blacks, and mandating that federal registrars register voters who had previously been turned away.
In 1968, the SCLC turned its attention to the issue of poverty. King developed the Poor People’s Campaign with the help of the SCLC. He and others spoke out against the economic discrimination faced by African Americans. The SCLC supported workers who had gone on strike in order to receive equal pay. The organization also pressured the Senate to approve a bill funding low-income housing.
In 1969, after King’s assassination the year before, the SCLC began to encounter trouble raising money. At the same time, the organization faced internal differences about goals. Yet the organization survived, and it continues the struggle for racial equality.
Further reading: Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987); David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow, 1986).
—Megan D. Wessel
World History
