Birth of the SCLC

Birth of the SCLC. March Route for Moral Justice. In January 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called ministers of the church-led movements in Southern cities, including Montgomery and Birmingham, to a meeting in Atlanta to form a national organization to help them all. Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was a student of Mahatma Gandhi's methods of nonviolent protest and an advisor to Dr. King. Rustin wanted to turn the Montgomery Bus Boycott's success into a broader, nonviolent strategy against all forms of racial discrimination. Rev. Shuttlesworth, Rev. Joseph Lowery of Mobile, Rev. Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, Rev. C.K. Steele of Tallahassee, along with Dr. King, organized 60 Black ministers. This meeting of ministers led to a bigger civil rights organization across the South. , Paired marker , February 1957 , When the ministers first met, they called their new organization "the Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent Integration.” In February 1957, they met again in New Orleans and changed the name to the “Southern Christian Leadership Conference” (SCLC). Because Rev. Shuttlesworth was an SCLC co-founder, they appointed him as its secretary. They expanded the SCLC's focus beyond buses to end all forms of racial segregation and thus "redeem the soul of America.” The SCLC would become the major organization at the heart of the modern American Civil Rights Movement. Under Rev. Shuttlesworth's leadership, the ACMHR would become the SCLC's most active and effective affiliate of its more than 85 local chapters., "Fred brought to the SCLC a kind of militancy. Fred was impatient with evil." , Rev. Joseph Lowery of Mobile , Co-founder of the SCLC, about Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth. , Lesson F8: What were the main differences between local Black movement churches and the SCLC?