Week 3: Dr King

During week 3 noting really happened, “boulot metro dodo” as we say in Paris... ;) (it means “work subway sleep”). On Saturday I went to the Martin Luther King center in Atlanta. They have organized a number a center around the district where Dr King grew up (his house, the church, …). In the center one can listen to a number of his speeches (you can buy most of them on CD too), watch a short movie of his life and read historical facts, mainly for the 60’s when his movements were taking momentum.

You learn about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which started after an African-American woman got arrested because she did not let her seat to a white rider. At that time it was the “law”. Dr King then proposed to boycott the bus company. Many African Americans followed. After many struggles, a year later the US Supreme Court declared the local law illegal.

Another movement was the Freedom Rides, launched by some students to contest the discrimination on interstate buses. Even though the Supreme Court had ruled that the segregation was illegal, these students encountered huge oppositions in the south. In the end, Kennedy had to intervene and ask the Commerce Commission to ban segregation.

My feeling was that it is very difficult for me, to just imagine these types of situations, where your seating area in a bus is function of the color of your skin. The worst is that this happened forty years ago… Dr King had a phenomenal charisma; you just want to cry when listening to him, I believe it was his destiny to lead African Americans to “freedom”, thank you for that.

Some references:
Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta
King Institute at Stanford