January 1957

On January 10-11, 1957, sixty Black ministers and civil rights leaders meet at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Martin Luther King Jr. is elected president. The organization uses the Black church as its organizational base, coordinating nonviolent direct action across the South. Ella Baker becomes the first executive director, setting up headquarters in Atlanta. The SCLC becomes the primary organizational vehicle for King's national civil rights leadership.

Ella Baker, who served as NAACP director of branches in the 1940s and co-founded In Friendship, becomes SCLC's first executive director in 1957. Baker builds the organization's grassroots infrastructure while consistently challenging what she calls the SCLC's reliance on charismatic male leadership. Her philosophy — 'strong people don't need strong leaders' — influences a generation of organizers. Her frustration with SCLC's top-down model leads her to nurture the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 as a more democratic alternative.

Robert F. Williams, NAACP chapter president in Monroe, North Carolina, organizes a rifle club after the Klan parades through Black neighborhoods with impunity. When Klansmen attack the home of a Black doctor, Williams and armed Black men repel them. The NAACP suspends Williams for advocating self-defense. He argues that 'meeting violence with violence' is legitimate when government offers no protection. His 1962 book 'Negroes with Guns' and his exile to Cuba influence Malcolm X and the Black Power movement.

Dorothy Height becomes president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957 and serves for 40 years. Under her leadership the NCNW connects civil rights activism with the specific concerns of Black women — economic empowerment, welfare rights, and representation. Height works alongside but often in the shadow of male leaders; she is notably absent from the podium at the 1963 March on Washington despite being the only woman in the inner civil rights leadership circle. Her career documents the gendered exclusion within civil rights organizing.

Robert F. Williams, NAACP chapter president in Monroe, North Carolina, organizes a rifle club after the Klan parades through Black neighborhoods with impunity. When Klansmen attack the home of a Black doctor, Williams and armed Black men repel them. The NAACP suspends Williams for advocating self-defense. He argues that 'meeting violence with violence' is legitimate when government offers no protection. His 1962 book 'Negroes with Guns' and his exile to Cuba influence Malcolm X and the Black Power movement.

On January 23, 1957, KKK members stop Willie Edwards Jr., a 25-year-old truck driver in Montgomery, Alabama, mistake him for another man dating a white woman, force him at gunpoint onto a bridge over the Alabama River, and make him jump. His body is found three months later. No criminal charges are filed until 1976, when the case is dismissed because the state's statute requires proof of the specific killing act. No one is ever convicted. Edwards's murder occurs weeks after the Montgomery bus desegregation.

On January 23, 1957, KKK members stop Willie Edwards Jr., a 25-year-old truck driver in Montgomery, Alabama, mistake him for another man dating a white woman, force him at gunpoint onto a bridge over the Alabama River, and make him jump. His body is found three months later. No criminal charges are filed until 1976, when the case is dismissed because the state's statute requires proof of the specific killing act. No one is ever convicted. Edwards's murder occurs weeks after the Montgomery bus desegregation.

Dr. King and allies form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.