Southern+Christian+Leadership+Conference

What is the SCLC?

 * The SCLC is an organization that fought, and still fights, against segregation.
 * Their main goal was to develop an organization that would coordinate and support a nonviolent direction for desegregation of the Southern buses.
 * As time when on their main focus was to desegregate the whole southern hemisphere and expand beyond that.

Where did it take place?

 * ===== It took place in the Southern Region. =====
 * As time went by it spread from the southern region to across the US.

How was it formed? Who was in it?

 * ====== The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) formed after the Montgomery Bus Boycott took place on December 5, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. ======
 * The organization was originally made up of priests, reverands, and members of black community churches.
 * Martin Luther King Jr was the president and Ralph Albert Abernathy was the program director.
 * Montgomery Improvement Association was involved (MIA)
 * 60 persons from 10 states announced the formation of SCLC and other protest groups in January of 1957.

What are some important events involving the SCLC?

 * ===== The Montgomery Bus Boycott on December 5, 1955. It lasted until December 21, 1956 with the desegregation of Montgomery buses that was lead by the Montgomery Improvement Association .=====
 * MIA was one of the most affective non violent protests, and it was shocking the nation.
 * Bus boycotts started to spread across the South.
 * The boycott triggered the beginning of Black America's new difficult struggles aside from segregation.
 * The MIA and other protest groups met in Atlanta and formed a regional organization to coordinate protest groups across the Southern region.
 * The bombing of the home and church of Ralph Abernathy.
 * In 1957 the SCLC issued a document that says it is essential for civil rights to be withheld in democracy, segregation must be stopped and ended, and if segregation were to take place that all Black people reject it but approach it in a nonviolent way.
 * A recent election stated that the SCLC would fight California's Proposition 8, a proposition that took away the right for gays and lesbians to marry.
 * The president, Rev. Eric P. Lee, didn't agree with the proposition. He said himself "It was clear to me that any time you deny one group of people the same right that other groups have that is a clear violation of civil rights and I have to speak up on that."

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is now an organization that speaks out for people's right to be their own person. It started with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, with Martin Luther King Jr. as president. It still exists to this day, in California guys and girls now have the right to gay marriage because of the SCLC. It is made up of reverends, priests, and members of the church.