In early 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. and other higher up black political activists made Selma, Alabama the center of the civil rights movement. Selma, a small town in Alabama was used by the African American activists as a focus for the push for African American voting rights. Even though a law had been passed in 1964 eliminating voter discrimination based off race, down in the deep south people had chosen all together to ignore the federal law. The activists wanted to bring attention to the issue and decided to do so by marching from Selma to the capital, Montgomery. The protesters were met with violent resistance by local and state authorities just for attempting to march out of the city of Selma. The Selma march is one of the biggest, most publicized racially charged events the United States has seen in our country's history. The selma march greatly impacted the way MLK and the other black activists approached the rest of the civil rights movement and affected how the American people perceived the civil rights movement as a whole. 

MLK was a man that wanted change the world he lived in. So much so that he began a huge movement that changed a nation forever. He knew that he alone could not change a nation and neither could just his activist group. His job was to persuade people how to think about the racial problem in America. He did this by putting pressure on the American people to make a decision. He was quoted saying "the time to make freedom and equality a reality is here and now"(King Jr. 285 Carolina Reader). This quote is a direct reflection of the marches in Selma. King knew that his people might be beaten badly trying to march but he knew it would get the attention of the American people. He knew that when the videos of his people being shot and beaten by police officers simply for walking down the street would stir things up. It was a turning point in the nation because it touched the conscience of the people and accelerated the historic Voting Rights Act. 

The whole plan started as a promise to the town of Marion who had just suffered a vicious beating by police officers and had lost a young man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, to a bullet from a police officer. The plan was to carry his coffin from Selma to Montgomery and place it on the steps of the capitol building. It was not initially all about getting the American people to notice what was going on it was just to show the Governor what he had just caused. The activists were angry that the people in the deep south thought they should be able to just ignore federal laws and prevent African Americans to vote. King said to the people before the march, "You will be the people that will light a new chapter in the history of our nation," he said. "Walk together, children, and don't you get weary, and it will lead us to the promised land. And Alabama will be a new Alabama. And America will be a new America.". This shows all King wanted was a new and better America free of racism and segregation. 

 The Selma march had a great impact on one of MLK's speeches "Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?". King talks about the choice we have as a society a lot. He says, "We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos and community." (Carolina Reader 299). He knows that the best way to make things change is to force people to get involved in the issue. And he does this by simply asking the people questions that they do not want to answer. He makes them uncomfortable with their views by showing them what they are supporting. King talks about the problem on hand saying, "This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great "world house in which we have to live together black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu - a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace." (Carolina Reader 285). He tries to make the reader realize this issue can not be pushed to the side for another day, that there needs to be some urgency in making this decision as a society. 

When King gave this speech he had achieved many of the tangible goals he had for the civil rights movement but there was still a feeling of tension in America. He is asking the American public if they would rather live in this divided, hateful house where no one gets along. Or to live in one giant house where we all work together and have respect for each other. After reading the speech it is hard not to think that King is worn down by the civil rights movement. Not that the speech is bad or it is not a powerful speech because it is. King seems to be attacking such a broad and long standing issue that it looks like a last ditch effort. King usually attempted to pinpoint specific issues, such as black voting rights, to fight but this speech is basically asking the people to not be racist anymore. Although it is an understandable request, there was no way a speech was going to significantly change anything.  King might be responding to the entire movement as a whole, asking why a group of people who are exactly like everyone else except have a different skin color should have to go through all of this just to have equal rights. Fighting for something that simple for so long could wear a person down over time.

Both the walk and the speech created by King were meant to get the same response out of the American people and that is to help them understand what the African American people have to go through just to do the simplest things. King essentially created the "awareness campaign" strategy that is still used frequently today. This speech is the product of a long and tiresome civil rights movement that took its toll on more than a few people. There are an extremely large number of events that are in the background of this text that people do not know about. The Selma- Montgomery march is definitely one of them but there are also many other horrendous events that took place that may have impacted this speech. 

Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to do everything possible to give the African American people equal rights in the United States. Even though he was able to obtain most of the tangible goals he knew it was not enough. He came to understand that a law would not change the way people thought. He knew the only way to truly give the black people equal rights was to start putting an end to racism and discrimination. He tried to do this with the Selma march, by showing the American people how brutal and unjust the white people in the deep south were. He also did it with his speech "Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?" by pleading with the public to change our ways of hatred and racism to ways of kindness and respect.  The selma march greatly impacted the way MLK and the other the black activists approached the rest of the civil rights movement and also affected how the American people perceived the civil rights movement as a whole. 

