4 From the 1660s, however, the colonies began enacting laws that defined and regulated slave relations; central to these laws was the provision that black slaves, and the children of slave women, would serve for life. By the eve of the American Revolution, slaves constituted about 40 percent of the population of the southern mainland …
James Earl Ray, the accused assassin of Dr. Martin Luther Martin Luther King, Jr., is knocMartin Luther King on death’s door with an appeal for justice. Ray, who is suffering from severe cirrhosis of the liver, recently emerged from a coma after weeks of unconsciousness. Although his health has stabilized, without a liver transplant, he …
Council of Federated Organizations or COFO, umbrella organization composed of various civil rights groups working independently in Mississippi. In February 1962, fearing that the divisiveness among various civil rights organizations would undermine what small progress they had made in Mississippi, Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) met with representatives of the National …
The Montgomery Bus Boycott a year-long protest in Montgomery, Alabama, that galvanized the American Civil Rights Movement and led to a 1956 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States declaring segregated seating on buses unconstitutional. In December 1955, 42,000 black residents of Montgomery began a year-long boycott of city buses ( Montgomery Bus …
If Ray did not shoot Martin Luther King from the boarding house bathroom window, where did the shot come from? One witness sitting in front of the bank of trees — the same trees that would have blocked Ray’s view from his alleged sniper’s nest — said he heard a rifle fire directly behind him …
