Skip to main content

Series of WSB-TV newsfilm clips of a press conference with comments by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about the Freedom Ride, Montgomery, Alabama, 1961 May 23

View
@ Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

WSB-TV (Television station : Atlanta, Ga.)

Description

In this series of WSB-TV newsfilm clips from a press conference about the continuation of the Freedom Ride held in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 23, 1961, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. discusses the imperative to continue the struggle. The clip begins with Dr. King, Reverend Abernathy, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) president John Lewis sitting down at a table; Lewis has a bandage on his head from injuries he received on May 21 when he and a group of students from Nashville were beaten after arriving in Montgomery. Wyatt Walker, SCLC executive secretary stands in the background. A group of cameramen and reporters line up in front of the table; the group of reporters includes an African American man as well as a white woman. King, apparently responding to a reporter's question, declares that encouraging African Americans to wait passively for their citizenship rights is impractical and immoral and asserts that "the time is always right to do right." He criticizes those who would say civil rights demonstrations and violent white resistance hurts the image of the United States in the international community, replying that "the thing that is hurting us most is the continued existence of segregation and discrimination." The clip ends with King's emphasizing that the struggle for civil rights "is a struggle to save the soul of America." The Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) during the summer of 1961, tested federal laws outlawing segregation in...
Type:
Video
Contributors:
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
View Original At:

Record Contributed By

Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia