|
Southern
Christian Leadership Conference
Led
by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference(SCLC) was started after the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott
of 1955-1956. Sixty black ministers from ten different states were asked
to help start this group, and they elected King the SCLC’s first president,
with Reverend Ralph Abernathy as treasurer. SCLC was very popular with the college
kids. Students worked with the SCLC to organize sit-ins at
cafeterias and lunch counters that still refused to serve African-Americans. The SCLC
played a major role in the civil rights demonstrations, yet they lost influence
as the movement continued. Many blacks turned against nonviolent tactics. The
students believed King’s willingness was just a compromise with the whites.
|