luding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), also organized by Dr. King but soon destined to
break away into more radical paths, and the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), an older organization, now expanded and under its new
director, James Farmer, rededicated to activism.

Rosa Parks's refusal to move to the rear of the Montgomery bus in 1955
and the ensuing successful black boycott that ended the city's
segregated transportation pointed the way to a wave of nonviolent
direct action that swept the country in the 1960's. Thousands of young
Americans, most notably in the student-led sit-ins enveloping the
south in 1960[19-13] and the scores of freedom riders bringing chaos
to the transportation system in 1961, carried the civil rights
struggle into all corners of the south. "We will wear you down by our
capacity to suffer," Dr. King warned the nation's majority, and suffer
Negroes did in the brutal resistance that met their demands. But it
was not in vain, for police brutality, mob violence, and
assassinations set off hundreds of demonstrations throughout the
country and made civil rights a national political issue.

[Footnote 19-13: For an account of the first major
sit-in demonstrations, which occurred at
Greensboro, North Carolina, and their influence on
civil rights organizations, including the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, see Miles Wolff,
_Lunch at the Five and Ten; The Greensboro Sit-in_
(New York: Stein and Day, 1970). See also Clark,
"The Civil Rights Movement," pp. 255-60.]

The stage was set for a climatic scene, and onto that stage walked the
familiar figure of A. Philip Randolph, calling for a massive march on
Washington to demand a redress of black grievances. This time, unlike
the response to his 1940 appeal, the answer was a promise of support
from both races. The churches joined in, many labor leaders, including
Walter Reuther, enlisted in the demonstration, and even the President,
at first opposed, gave his blessing to the national event. A quarter
of a million people, about 20 percent of them white, marched to
Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963 to hear King appeal to the (p. 479)
the nation's conscience by reciting his dream of a just society. In
the words of the Kerner Commission:

It [the march] was more th