How Did Martin Luther King's Impact On American Society

Hubert Humphrey once stated, "When we say, ‘One nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,' we are talking about all people. We either ought to believe it or quit saying it" (Hakim 111). During the 1960's, a great number of people did, in fact, begin to believe it. These years were a time of great change for America. The country was literally redefined as people from all walks of life fought to uphold their standards on what they believed a true democracy is made of; equal rights for all races, freedom of speech, and the right to stay out of wars in which they felt they didn't belong. The music of the era did a lot of defining and upholding as well; in fact, it was a driving force, or at the very least a strongly supporting force,
To this day, some people believe that the FBI was involved in the killing, due to the fact that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover strongly and openly disliked King . These beliefs have never been confirmed (Benson 33). King's tactics of peaceful demonstration were the most popular of the time. Sit-ins were very common, originating in 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina when, despite being covered in ketchup and brutally beaten by violent spectators, four black students refused to leave a lunch counter at Woolworth's until they were served (Benson 16),. Protestors simply wrapped their ankles around the stool legs and grasped the edges of their seats, defiantly resisting all attempts to remove them (Hakim 100). More efficient than the sit-ins, however, were the marches that took place during the time. A march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery in 1964 resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a march on Washington in 1963 consisting of two- hundred and fifty thousand participants, sixty-thousand of whom were white (Benson 47), proved how significant the movement really