hat any form of segregation was illegal and immoral (Hakim 69-71). Unfortunately, not everyone was eager to embrace this change. Many whites felt that if they were forced to share, they would rather go without. Across the country, public recreational facilities were locked up rather than integrated. In Birmingham, Alabama in 1962, for example, sixty-eight parks, thirty-eight playgrounds, six pools, and four gold courses were closed to the public (Hakim 97).
             Congress had finally granted equal rights, but the black population of America had a long way to go before their rights were truly equal. Many groups such as the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee), and CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality) were formed to organize rallies and marches to support their cause (Benson 15, 18-19). A few individuals such as James Farmer and Marin Luther King, Jr., however, stand out among all others as the true leaders of the movement. Farmer was the nation's first black man to earn a Ph.D., and he was also the founder of CORE. He realized that the black population would be seen as ignorant and inferior until they had equal education and job training. He demanded that the federal government provide programs to make education and training available, stating, "When a society has crippled some of it's people, it has an obligation to provide the requisite crutches" (Benson 34-35).
             Martin Luther King Jr., born in 1929, became famous for his methods of anti-violent protest, modeled after the methods of the late Mahatma Ghandi. He said Ghandi taught him that, "...there is more power in socially organized masses on the march than... in guns in the hands of a few desperate men." In 1964, King became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (Hakim 76, 121). On April 4, 1968, however, King's short life was brought to an untimely end when he was...