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Martin Luther King: Community Service
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In May 1962 King was asked to assist in the civil rights struggle in Birmingham, Ala., and the SCLC made plans to hold its annual convention there. The Birmingham campaign began with a series of workshops on nonviolence. In early 1963 King made a speaking tour, recruiting volunteers and obtaining money for bail bonds for those arrested in the struggle. On April 3 a manifesto was issued by the black community, and the campaign began in earnest with picketings and sit-ins. On the Friday before Easter, Dr. King was jailed; on Easter Sunday, African Americans appeared at white churches asking to join their fellow Christians in worship. When Dr. King's brother was arrested on his way to the Birmingham jail to pray for King, a near riot resulted.
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The 2007 Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service was once again the largest King Day service event in the nation. The event drew some 1,000 participants overall when it began in 1996 and has grown exponentially ever since. The 2007 King Day of Service included Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. This year’s turnout added approximately 5,000 volunteers to last year's record numbers.
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King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out in often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and 1962, where divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts; in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963; and in the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.[6]
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In 1994, Congress passed legislation encouraging Americans to observe the King Holiday as a day of service that brings people together from different backgrounds to meet needs in their community. Participation has grown every year and 2008 promises to be a historic year.
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- Here's a site that asks students to live up to Dr. King's ideals by engaging in a service project to help those less fortunate than they. Teachers looking for a meaningful way to honor Dr. King might find this approach attractive.
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