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Black History Month: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference

By tim on Feb 24, 2014 11:29 AM
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The 16th Street Baptist Church, where the SCLC organized the Birmingham Campaign in 1963. The church was bombed by KKK terrorists in September of that year in response. This photo is by flickr user iamNigelMorris.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in 1957 by none other than Dr. Martin Luther King Junior himself after the civil rights victory in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Initially formed to coordinate other nonviolent protests to desegregate bus systems, their efforts would eventually encompass all desegregation efforts and not just those in transit systems. The SCLC would go on to be integral in many of the Civil Rights era activities, like the Albany Movement, the Birmingham Campaign (where King wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail), the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Selma Voting Rights campaign and more. Their contributions and dedication to non-violent protest were some of the most radical and game-changing of the Civil Rights Movement, and helped forge a lasting legacy that continues to this day (much like the organization itself). So as Black History Month winds down (as for some reason it is assigned to the shortest month of the year), why not take a look into the storied history of this great and influential organization? Click any of the above links to see what we have in the library catalog on all these topics.

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