The Encyclopedia of World Religions

254 S King, Martin Luther, Jr.

refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” King remained the dominant influence on the civil rights movement until 1965. Some of his actions failed, but many achieved results. The widest suc cess came when the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The widest recognition came when King received the Nobel Prize for peace in 1964. Beginning in 1965, younger members of the movement became impatient with King’s non violent methods. They began to advocate a more active black power. In 1966 King tried to overcome segregation in northern American cities. He tar geted Chicago, but his efforts there failed. In 1967 King spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War.

boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. . . . When we let freedom ring . . . we will be able to speed up that day when all of G OD ’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” King also advocated distinctive tactics for pursuing integration: active but nonviolent resis tance. These tactics owed a great deal to Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns. In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (Spring 1963), King expressed the idea behind these tactics. “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly

Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, D.C., 1963 (Archive Photos)