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Unit 3: Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

schools. Yet this Act could only pass in the right atmosphere, Notes
and the creation of such an atmosphere is generally attributed
to one pivotal series of events and their repercussions: the
civil rights protests in Birmingham in 1963, and the response
of many white Americans to the white-on-black violence
they provoked.
Congress of Racial Equality : The first organisation in the Civil Rights Movement
systematically to employ non-violent direct action, the Congress
of Racial Equality, or CORE, was founded in Chicago in
1942. In the 1960s, it participated in activism in the South,
providing support and supervisions to sit-ins and voter-
registration campaigns, often cooperating with King and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

3.8 Review Questions

1. How did King’s extensive education affect his career as a leader of the Civil Rights
Movement?
2. Contrast King’s view of America during the last three years of his life with his view
during the Birmingham and Selma campaigns.
3. Was King a leader in the right place at the right time, or can his success be attributed
to his innate characteristics?
4. Why did some of King’s campaigns succeed, and others not?

5. How did King’s relationship to the Johnson Administration differ from his relationship
to the Kennedy Administration?
6. Toward what audience did King direct his “I Have a Dream” speech? How is this clear
from the speech’s language?
7. Characterize King’s relationship to other leaders and organizations of the Civil Rights
Movement.
8. Why was the church an important part of King’s work as an activist? What did he gain
by working with and through it?
9. What aspects of King’s life are emphasized in mainstream America’s remembrance of
him?
10. If King had not been assassinated, what campaigns might he have organized in the 1970s
and 1980s? Would the Civil Rights Movement perhaps fared differently during these
years, or, after the victories of the sixties, was deceleration inevitable?

Answers: Self-Assessment

1. (a) 2. (d) 3. (a) 4. (a)
5. (d)

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