INTERESTING HISTORY NEWSLETTER
June 15, 2009
King and Colvin
Michael King
was born January 15, 1929. Growing up in Atlanta, he
attended Booker T. Washington High School, skipping two grades
along the way, entering Morehouse College at fifteen years old.
By 1951 King had earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology
as well as a Bachelor of Divinity degree. He then began his
doctoral studies and achieved his Doctor of Philosophy on June
5, 1955.
At twenty-five
years old, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church but he had already begun to identify with the poor and
disadvantaged and this would become the focus of his life. King
would end up being one of the great Civil Rights leaders in
American History. Although he was born Michael King, Jr., his
father had changed both their to Martin. Michael became
known by the name Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the same year that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. achieved his Doctor of Philosophy (1955),
another important event in Civil Rights was taking place when a
black female boarded a Capital Heights bus in
Alabama. She was sitting there as the bus began to fill,
and when the other seats were filled, the bus driver ordered
her, along with three other black passengers to surrender their
seats to boarding white passengers. She refused
which prompted the bus driver to call the police to have her
removed. She was charged and found guilty of a crime for this
defiance.
The person that refused to give
up her seat that day was 15 year-old Claudette Colvin. It
wasn’t until later that year that Rosa Parks refused to give up
her seat under the same circumstances. What many do not realize
is that although the actions of Rosa Parks did spark the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, she was not the first to refuse to give
up her seat on a bus, nor was Claudette Colvin for that matter.
In 1946, Irene Morgan Kirkaldy refused to give up her seat on
an interstate Greyhound bus and was jailed in Virginia. This
case lead to a U.S. Supreme Court landmark 7-1 ruling that
Virginia state law enforcing segregation did not apply to
interstate buses.
Mark Bowman
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CIVIL RIGHT
MOVEMENT BOOKS
 Civil
Right Movement
(Paperback)
 Click
picture to buy this book
Public debate about how the
civil rights movement should be remembered
takes place in myriad ways, from naming streets
after civil rights figures to the creation of
memorials and museums, from depictions in
movies and other cultural media to the
commodification of iconic figures. Remembrances
are also evident in the trials of now-old men
who bombed churches and otherwise terrorized
blacks and the appropriation of civil rights
memories by politicians, including
conservatives, to sell their political
agendas.
History professor Romano and
African American studies professor Raiford
offer a collection of essays that examines the
way this tumultuous period is now remembered.
The book is organized in four parts analyzing
how the era is officially remembered and
commemorated; the role of visual culture in
representing the era; elements of the movement
that have been ignored in "official"
narratives; and the way the movement is used in
contemporary political struggles, including the
push for gay rights.
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