Historical Organization
SCLC
SCLC
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Organization Timeline
King is arrested during the Birmingham campaign
đź“… 12 April 1963Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested while participating in Birmingham demonstrations despite a court injunction. The arrest placed the conflict between court-enforced restrictions and nonviolent...
King dates his Letter from Birmingham Jail
đź“… 16 April 1963Writing from jail, King defended nonviolent direct action against criticism by white clergy. He explained why people suffering segregation could not indefinitely postpone their claims to justice....
Young people join Birmingham’s Children’s Crusade
📅 2 May 1963School-age demonstrators entered the Birmingham campaign in large numbers and faced mass arrests. Their participation expanded the challenge to segregation and exposed the state’s treatment of young...
The March on Washington links jobs and freedom
đź“… 28 August 1963A mass demonstration in Washington demanded civil rights protections, employment and economic justice. Movement and labour organizations brought their constituencies together for the March on...
Police attack voting-rights marchers on Bloody Sunday
đź“… 7 March 1965John Lewis and Hosea Williams led marchers out of Selma toward Montgomery. State troopers and local law-enforcement officers attacked them near the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The violence exposed the...
Selma demonstrators hold the Turnaround Tuesday march
đź“… 9 March 1965King led demonstrators, including religious supporters who had come to Selma, to the site of the police attack. They prayed and returned rather than continuing to Montgomery amid legal restrictions....
The protected Selma-to-Montgomery march begins
đź“… 21 March 1965Demonstrators departed Selma under federal protection after earlier attempts had faced repression. Local residents and national supporters sustained a five-day march demanding voting rights. Federal...
Voting-rights marchers reach Montgomery
📅 25 March 1965The Selma march culminated at Alabama’s capital with a mass rally. Organizers demanded effective political participation for Black citizens rather than acceptance of constitutional promises without...
James Meredith is shot during his March Against Fear
đź“… 6 June 1966Meredith was wounded while walking through Mississippi to challenge intimidation and encourage Black political participation. Civil rights organizations continued the march after the attack. Their...
Chicago’s Freedom Sunday rally presses for open housing
📅 10 July 1966A major rally at Soldier Field advanced the Chicago Freedom Movement’s campaign against residential segregation. Local organizers and SCLC connected housing access with wider urban inequality. Their...
Racist crowds attack Chicago open-housing marchers
đź“… 5 August 1966Demonstrators marching through a white neighbourhood encountered racist hostility and attacks; King was struck by a rock. The confrontation exposed the force defending residential segregation in a...
King’s Beyond Vietnam speech connects racism, poverty and war
đź“… 4 April 1967At Riverside Church in New York, King publicly challenged the Vietnam War and connected militarism with racial and economic injustice. He argued that struggles for justice at home could not be...
King is assassinated while supporting Memphis workers
đź“… 4 April 1968Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he had come to support striking sanitation workers. His final campaigns connected racial equality with economic justice. His...
Coretta Scott King joins the Memphis solidarity march
📅 8 April 1968Coretta Scott King and other family members marched with thousands in Memphis, honouring King and supporting sanitation workers. The demonstration sustained the workers’ demands after his...
A Mother’s Day march advances the Poor People’s Campaign
📅 12 May 1968Coretta Scott King led women in a Washington march that opened the campaign’s major public demonstrations. The coalition brought people from different racial and regional backgrounds together around...