NBC News: Meet The Press- Dr. Martin Luther King in (1965)

Source:NBC News interviewing Dr. Reverend Martin L. King, on NBC News Meet The Press, in 1965.

Source:The Daily Journal

“On March 28, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press to discuss his historic five-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama…

One week after leading, King said that the demonstration was necessary not just to help push the Voting Rights Bill through, but to draw attention to the humiliating conditions in Alabama such as police brutality and racially-motivated murder.” 

From NBC News 

Dr. Martin Luther King and his movement, wasn’t marching for the exercise, or the fresh air of it. But they were marching for freedom and to have the same constitutional rights and freedom as Americans who were born in America, as any other American that they already had under the U.S. Constitution. But weren’t getting their constitutional rights enforced equally under law as European-Americans and that is what they were marching for for equal rights and equal treatment under law and were very successful with their movement.

African-Americans, in the 1960s, were marching for their freedom that every other American had under the U.S. Constitution, but under law as well. That government discriminating against people based on race like forcing people to go to poor schools and sit in the back of the bus and not be able to eat at certain restaurants, being denied the right to vote and so-forth, was simply unconstitutional. And that they were mad as hell (to paraphrase a certain great actor and movie) and weren’t going to take it anymore and were going to fight back in a non-violent manner.

1964-65 was the Martin L. King’s wing of the civil rights movement’s peak, when they were at the top of their game (so to speak) and were pushing the ball and on the offensive with the anti-equal rights supporters on the defensive at every point in the courts, in the media, and even in Congress.

With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act after those two laws were passed, the MLK movement sort of went off in different directions and talking about the Vietnam War and other issues. Instead of putting the full focus on equal rights and fighting poverty.