Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Paul Schutzer / Time Life Pictures

The Freedom Rides
During the spring of 1960, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality launched a movement to challenge segregation on interstate buses. Though King did not initially join them, he publicly supported them, and when they encountered angry white mobs in Montgomery, Alabama, he traveled there and staged a rally at the church of Ralph Abernathy (above, left).

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