Why do we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when others did so much

As we as a nation spend today as a celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., I realized that he is the only one we officially celebrate nationally from the 20^th century Civil Rights era. At first I found it upsetting that others of the era did not get the recognition they deserve, but after researching I understood why he is the only one with a national holiday. It is because he was their leader.
Dr. King had many roles throughout his life. He was a pastor, a humanitarian, an activist, and most importantly a leader. As the leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King both directly and indirectly gave people the strength to fight for equality using nonviolent tactics to get the point across.

While Dr. King is celebrated, many other groups go undetected by the general public. Elementary school is the prime time in which students are taught about treating others as their equals, however as I remember it, really only two events from the Civil Rights Movement are taught; Dr. King’s march on Washington and Rosa Parks in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. With so much history in that era, why does so much go untaught?

The answer is simple really. Schools find the need to cram the information in with a little amount of time, so they summarize the era into said events. The schools chose to pick the most influential person in the era and to only speak about them. The same thing could be said about how public school systems teach children about the Holocaust. They focus on Anne Frank and move on from the subject. As a History minor at Marshall University, I find this to be rather disappointing.

I do not intend to undermine Dr. King’s work because he was so important to this era.  If anyone should be celebrated from this era, it is Dr. King. Dr. King helped establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 and became its president. He was jailed 30 times for his nonviolent protesting. He led the march in Washington, D.C. with 200,000 people where he gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King chose to give the $54,000 awarded money to civil rights groups towards the fight of equality. Most importantly, however, Dr. King gave his life to the fight when King, who was very anti-violent, was assassinated by James Earl Ray in 1968.

Dr. King was the leader of the era and an important part of the lessons children should learn, however what will happen to the other groups in 100 years when they are long gone and forgotten because they are not being celebrated in the classroom.

Here are a few of the groups I feel should have their own day of celebration along with Dr. King:

Brown v. Board of Education

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court declared laws establishing separate public schools unconstitutional. The main plaintiff, Oliver L. Brown, argued his third grader daughter, Linda, had to walk six blocks just to get to the bus stop while a white school was only seven blocks away.  

After the case was won, the NAACP directed parents to enroll their children in the closet neighborhood school. All were refused enrollment.  Eventually the national government forced the schools to allow Linda and other children to enroll and attend their schools. Linda was escorted by the National Guard through parents protesting outside the school every day for weeks until the protesting stopped.  

The Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine were a group of African American Students who were the first to enroll at Little Rock Central High School.  When the students went to attend their first day of school, they found several segregationist protesting outside, along with the Arkansas National Guard, who were sent by the Governor to keep the Nine out.

The mayor of Little Rock requested assistance from Dwight Eisenhower who sent federal troops, the 101^st Airborne Division of the United States Army, to enforce integration and protect the students. The students were still subjected to abuse for the next year and one of the students, Melba Pattillo, even had acid thrown in her eyes.

The Greensboro Four

The sit-in at the Woolworth Department Store was part of a series of sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C.. On February 1, 1960 four students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a segregated lunch counter inside the department store and requested service, showing receipts of proof of their shopping in the store. Following store policy, the staff refused to serve the men.

The men stayed until the store closed and the next day more than 20 African Americans joined the sit in. The students were heckled and abused, but continued to come back. The third day, 60 people came to the store and the fourth more than 300 people, both black and white, too part. The sit-in’s spread to other segregated stores in Greensboro, and eventually students from all across the county joined in their own cities.  

As tensions grew in Greensboro, sales at boycotted stores dropped by a third, which forced store owners to abandon their segregation policies, including at Woolworth.  On July 25, 1960, over 5 months later, black employees of Woolworth were the first to be served at the lunch counter.

The Freedom Rider’s

The Freedom Riders were a group of (black and white) civil rights activists who rode cross country on buses into segregated areas in the southern United States to try to change the non-enforcement of rulings which declared bus segregation to be unconstitutional. The Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961 and was scheduled to reach its final destination of New Orleans on May 17.

Many towns organized violence against the Freedom Riders with local Ku Klux Klan chapters. Birmingham Police Commissioner, Bull Connor planned to stopped the Ride in Alabama with extreme violence. On May 14^th a mob attacked the first of the two buses by slashing its tires and firebombing it. As the bus was burning, the mob held the shut, trying to kill those inside. A loud disputed explosion happened and the mob retreated, allowing members off the bus. As the passengers retreated, they were severely beat.  This is just one example of the violence they faced, as they continued to ‘Ride’ and face violence in several other towns.