Civil Rights

The rights of Negro people were severely limited in America during the time in which Martin Luther King Jr. was coming out of school and beginning his first job as pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Buses, public buildings, schools, and parks were all segregated, relegating the use of these places for Negroes to a certain section, or to alternate facilities that were often less than acceptable in standards. These separate facilities had been a way of life for many years, especially in the southern states; but the time had finally come when Negroes were ready to do something about it. Lawyers in Montgomery had seen the possibility of forcing a challenge to segregation by taking a segregation case to court for a long time, but a suitable defendant did not come along until the night Rosa Parks, a seamstress with a local department store and secretary...