Saori writes about Martin Luther King Jr.
'Every Negro comes face to face with this colour shock,
and it constitutes a major emotional crisis..... All prejudice
is evil, But the prejudice that rejects a man because of the colour
of his skin is the most despicable expression of man's inhumanity
to man.'
Martin Luther King, Jr. (King, 62)
So strong were the beliefs of Martin Luther King, Jr. that it was he who played an important role in the demise of segregation in the U.S.
He became a major civil rights leader in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s by using nonviolent resistance. His dream of ending segregation moved millions of people to walk with him on his March on Washington D.C. and it was his unbreakable spirit, despite attempts on his life, that gave the black people courage to stand up for their own rights and to never give up until victory was achieved.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was preacher and a well-educated man. He was a natural leader and a brilliant public speaker who spent much of his time campaigning for equal rights for blacks and whites. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s greatest wish was to help his people. He believed they had two problems. One was being kept separate from others through segregation and the other was their poverty. How could he help? His search for answers led him to the great Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was a civil rights leader in India who in 1947 helped to win freedom for India from British Rule. He believed that people had the right to fight unjust laws through civil disobedience. He told his people not to use violence but to resist only in peaceful ways: they could march, sit, or lie down in the streets, strike or fast. But they were to never use violence. 'Violence defeats itself. It only brings about more hate and more violence' he said. (Peck, 20) The more he studied Gandhi, the more Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that this method of peaceful civil disobedience might work to bring the American Negroes their freedom and independence. He truly believed the teachings of Gandhi, and went on to teach that: 'Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.' (Rappaport, 12)
In the U.S., especially in the South, African-Americans were treated as inferiors by the white Americans. They had to go to different schools, libraries, parks, and restaurants, far separated from the whites. Everywhere signs read 'Whites Only' or 'For Coloured Only'. In shops, the blacks had to use side windows, in movie theatres, they were restricted to the balcony. This was called segregation and it was enforced by legal restrictions called the Jim Crow Laws. (Wukovits, 12)