Rare and unpublished photographs of the civil rights movement from theLifeMagazine archive
Minister, Activist, Hero, Icon
King's unique vision reshaped the landscape of American politics and society. In his brief life, he redefined what it means to be black in the United States, and, by extension, what it means to be an American.Francis Miller / Time Life Pictures
Victory
In June of 1956, the federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. After surviving challenges up to the Supreme Court, the ruling stood firm and, on December 20, 1956, King declared the boycott over. The following day, members of the black community, including Rosa Parks, boarded the buses for the first time in over a year.Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty
Back on the Bus
Life photographer Don Cravens documented Rosa Parks' first ride on the integrated bus system. Of the strike, King wrote, "We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation."Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty
The Prayer Pilgrimage
In 1957, nearly 25,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. for three hours of spirituals and speeches urging the federal government to fulfill the requirement of Brown v. Board of Education. The last speech of the day was delivered by King.Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures
‘Give Us The Ballot’
King's speech that day was a hypnotic oration on the sacred rights and powers of the vote. "Give us the ballot," he said, "and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights." A harbinger of the "I Have a Dream" speech that King would deliver from the same spot six years later, it catapulted him to national visibility.Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures
Montgomery Jail
In 1958, photographer Grey Villet accompanied King on a trip back to Montgomery, where he delivered a speech and (above) spoke to men at the police station.Grey Villet / Time Life Pictures
The Sit-In Movement
Begun when four black students from North Carolina A & T College sat down at a section of a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina reserved for whites, the sit-in movement quickly spread to other parts of the south. Life sent photographer Howard Sochurek to Petersburg, Virginia, where young people protested the lunch counter policies at a Grants store.Howard Sochurek / Time Life Pictures
Strategy Session
King, seen here meeting with college students about the sit-ins, valued the movement for the way it enabled young people to gain confidence in their own leadership. He described the approach as an "electrifying movement of Negro students (that) shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South."Donald Uhrbrock / Time Life Pictures / Getty
The Firing Line
Lunch counter sit-in volunteers endure a simulation of what they might expect when they take seats in the white sections of stores.Howard Sochurek / Time Life Pictures
Non-violent Protest
Four African Americans stand in line for the lunch counter at Grants.Howard Sochurek / Time Life Pictures
King’s Lieutenants
A photo taken at a strategy session in Albany, Georgia shows Wyatt Tee Walker (second from left), executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed in 1957 to coordinate the action of local protest groups throughout the South and Andrew Young (to Walker's left), one of King's most trusted advisers, as well as a future congressman and mayor of Atlanta.Donald Uhrbrock / Time Life Pictures / Getty
Desegregation in Tennessee
In its landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Clinton High School in Tennessee was ordered by a federal judge to be the first to integrate. Photographer Robert W. Kelley, sent by Life to document the first day, encountered this scene in front of the school.Robert W. Kelley / Time Life Pictures
The Freedom Rides
During the spring of 1960, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality launched a movement to challenge segregation on interstate buses. Though King did not initially join them, he publicly supported them, and when they encountered angry white mobs in Montgomery, Alabama, he traveled there and staged a rally at the church of Ralph Abernathy (above, left).Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures
Military Escort
National Guardsmen accompany two Freedom Riders on a bus from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi. The violence and necessity for federal intervention propelled the protesters to national prominence.Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures
Rest For The Weary
A group of Freedom Riders sleep in a church along the route.Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures
Dark Day in Birmingham
King stands with others at a funeral for four young girls killed by a bomb set off the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. In his eulogy, King preached that the girls were "the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity."Burton McNelley / Time Life Pictures / Getty
Legacy
King greets supporters at the Prayer Pilgrimage. Forty years after his death, Dr. King's revolutionary deeds inspire millions around the world and his message of freedom and equality for all resonates through every conversation about race in America today.Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures
Violence in the Streets
Crowds angered by the integration order in Clinton attacked blacks in their cars.Robert W. Kelley / Time Life Pictures
Little Rock
A similar drama unfolded in Arkansas, where governor Orval Faubus prevented nine African American students from enrolling in High School. They were counseled by the president of the Arkansas NAACP, Daisy Bates, whose home was attacked by angry whites. In a telegram, King urged Bates to "adhere rigorously to a way of non-violence," and assured her, "The moral conscience of millions of white Americans is with you."Grey Villet / Time Life Pictures
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
In 1955, the black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, inspired by the arrest of Rosa Parks, who refused to give her seat to a white man, began a 13-month boycott of the city bus system. The strike was coordinated by the Montgomery Improvement Association, with King as its president.Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty
Rosa Parks
King wrote that the seamstress was "ideal for the role assigned to her by history," because "her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted."Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty
The Strike Committee
The boycott called on the city to ban the Jim Crow practices on the city buses, namely that black riders not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and that the buses be required to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities.Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty
Sympathy Strike
Black communities in other cities, like Tallahassee (above), organized similar boycotts.Robert W. Kelley / Time Life Pictures
Arrested
Three months into the strike, 156 protesters, including King, were arrested for violating a 1921 law against "hindering" a bus. King was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in prison, a move that backfired because it called national attention to the protest.Don Cravens / Time Life Pictures / Getty
