Chasing King's Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassin

The Freedom Riders were a group of Civil Rights activists who protested interstate bus segregation. Even though the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional, many local governments failed to enforce the law. The first group of Freedom Riders boarded a Greyhound bus in Washington, DC, bound for New Orleans. Along the way, the bus was surrounded by angry mobs, and the riders were attacked. Many other Freedom Riders met a similar fate.

Jim Crow laws were instated in the Southern United States following the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. These laws enforced racial segregation, implying a “separate but equal” society where Black people and white people had access to the same services like public education and transportation. However, the options for Black people were often significantly worse than those for white people, and the laws ensured discrimination and oppression.

The Montgomery Improvement Association was created on December 5, 1955, to organize the Montgomery bus boycott. King was elected as the organization’s leader. The MIA later became a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (see entry below) and continued to organize Civil Rights activities throughout the 1960s.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909 to further the rights of African Americans. It played an important role in supporting the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and remains active to this day.

Sit-ins were a form of nonviolent protest used during the civil rights movement. Across the South, activists would occupy spaces like all-white lunch counters to protest segregation.