Martin Luther King, Jr.

Object Details

Exhibition Label: Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a rally in Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church; Birmingham’s black churches served as vital community rallying points and training centers for nonviolent protest throughout the direct-action campaign known as "Project C"—for confrontation. On May 2, 1963, from the city’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, King launched his controversial yet highly successful "children’s crusade," in which protesters ranging in age from six to eighteen marched to demand their freedom. Televised scenes of those children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, menaced by police dogs, and loaded into paddy wagons did much to turn public opinion against Birmingham city officials. On May 10, King and his SCLC colleagues announced that a four-point settlement had been reached. It provided for desegregation of various facilities in all downtown stores within ninety days; adoption of nonracial hiring and promotion practices by those stores within sixty days; release of all imprisoned protestors; and establishment of permanent avenues of communication between white and black leaders.

1963 (printed 1996)

Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Image: 21.6cm x 32.3cm (8 1/2" x 12 11/16"); Sheet: 28.2cm x 35.5cm (11 1/8" x 14")

National Portrait Gallery

Topic: Equipment\Sound Devices\Microphone; Interior\Church; Music\Musical instrument\Organ; Architecture\Building\Church\Pulpit; Martin Luther King, Jr.: Male; Martin Luther King, Jr.: Society and Social Change\Reformer\Activist\Civil rights activist\Civil rights leader; Martin Luther King, Jr.: Religion and Spirituality\Clergy\Minister; Martin Luther King, Jr.: Nobel Prize; Martin Luther King, Jr.: Presidential Medal of Freedom; Martin Luther King, Jr.: Congressional Gold Medal; Portrait

GUID (Link to Original Record): http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/sm48edcba03-00e3-44d9-8856-46771fd3ff98