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Front Cover Feature We Shall Over Come Civil Rights 1964 - 2014 Malcolm X Dr . Martin Luther King , Jr Jacksonville , Florida August 2014
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Both Martin Luther King Jr . and Malcolm X fought for black civil rights in America but their beliefs and methods were opposite in the extreme . They met briefly at a press conference on March 26 , 1964
Voting Rights By the mid-1960s , however , most eligible black voters in the South remained disfranchised . Following World War II , African Americans initiated local efforts to exercise the right to vote but faced strong and sometimes violent resistance from local whites . Organized initiatives to enfranchise blacks climaxed with the Summer Project of 1964 . Popularly known as Freedom Summer , it came under the auspices of the Council of Federated Organizations ( COFO ), which included the SCLC , the SNCC , CORE , and the NAACP . Targeting Mississippi , where in many counties no blacks were registered to vote , COFO launched a massive and largely unsuccessful voter-registration drive . White resistance was widespread and included several killings . ( In one particularly notable case , three civil rights workers disappeared on June 21 , and their bodies were found on August 4 ; a federal court convicted seven individuals in connection with the murders in 1967 , but the state of Mississippi did not prosecute the case until 2005 , when one 80-year-old man was convicted of manslaughter .) The voter-registration effort did , however , capture the attention of many lawmakers , who began calling for federal voting-rights legislation . Such legislation was enacted following events in Selma , Ala . King and the SCLC went there in February 1965 , hoping to boost a languishing voting-rights drive that had been organized by the SNCC and local blacks . After two failed attempts , King led an 87-km ( 54-mi ) march from Selma to Montgomery . Three activists lost their lives during the Selma demonstrations , but in August 1965 , President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act .
Martin Luther King Jr . believed in the teachings of Mohandas Ghandi and promoted peaceful methods to acheive equal rights through rallies and civil disobedience . He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his efforts to unite the people of the world . He was assasinated on April 4 , 1968 in Memphis , TN on the balcony of his hotel .
Malcolm X also headed rallies and gave speeches , but had adopted the teachings of Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad , leading him to promote violence in his followers in order for them to achieve the same civil rights accorded to whites . Although he did unite blacks in searching for equality , his radical ways made him less effective than Martin Luther King Jr . as a leader on the world stage . He was assasinated on February 21 , 1965 while delivering a speech .