C k steele biography for kids

The Tallahassee bus boycott was a citywide boycott in Tallahassee, Florida that sought to end racial segregation in the employment and seating arrangements of city buses. On May 26, 1956, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, two Florida A&M University students, were arrested by the Tallahassee Police Department for "placing themselves in a position to incite a riot". Robert Saunders, representing the NAACP, and Rev. C. K. Steele began talks with city authorities while the local African-American community started boycotting the city's buses. The Inter-Civic Council ended the boycott on December 22, 1956. On January 7, 1957, the City Commission repealed the bus-franchise segregation clause because of the United States Supreme Court ruling Browder v. Gayle (1956).

History

Not only were buses segregated, with white riders at the front and black ones in the back, if there were no free black seats black riders had to stand, even if there were free white seats. Furthermore, if there were more white riders than white seats, black riders had to surrender their seats.

Jakes and Patterson boarded a city bus and sat in the only open seats, which were next to a white woman. The driver declared that the two women could not sit where they were sitting, and Jakes agreed to get off the bus if she received her bus fare in return. The driver would not return Jakes' bus fare and drove to a service station, where he then called the police, who subsequently arrested the women. Later that day, the students were bailed out by the Dean of Students.

The day after the incident, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in front of the women's residence. News of the cross-burning quickly spread throughout the campus, and Student Government Association officers, led by Brodes Hartley, called for a meeting of the student body. The incidents (the cross-burning and the arrest) were discussed in the meeting. Student leaders called for the withdrawal of

American civil rights activist (1914–1980)

For other people named Charles Steele, see Charles Steele (disambiguation).

Charles Kenzie Steele (February 17, 1914 – (1980-08-19)August 19, 1980) was a preacher and a civil rights activist. He was one of the main organizers of the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott, and a prominent member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. On March 23, 2018, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed CS/SB 382 into law, designating portions of Florida State Road 371 and Florida State Road 373 along Orange Avenue in Tallahassee as C.K. Steele Memorial Highway.

Background

Steele was the son of a coal miner, an only child. At a young age, he knew that he wanted to be a preacher, and he started preaching when he was 15 years old. Steele graduated from Morehouse College in 1938. He then began preaching in Toccoa and Augusta, Georgia, then in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Hall Street Baptist Church (1938–1952). In 1952 Steele moved to Tallahassee, where he started preaching at the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. Steele met Martin Luther King Jr. when he was on his way to Tallahassee.

Tallahassee bus boycott

Main article: Tallahassee bus boycott

The Tallahassee bus boycott began in May, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott. Like other bus boycotts during the Civil Rights Movement in America, it started because black people were forced to ride in the back of the bus, and when two students refused to give up their seat to a white woman, they were arrested. An organization was formed to protest and boycott against the city bus system. The organization was called Inter-civic Council and Steele was elected president. Steele and other protesters boycotted the system by starting car pools and the bus system had stopped for the first time in 17 years on July 1. Steele was arrested many times during this period.

The people in Tallahassee thought that

February 7, 1914 to August 19, 1980

The first vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reverend C. K. Steele shared Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of social equality through nonviolent means. As president of the Inter-Civic Council, Steele led a successful bus boycott in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1956, based on the example set by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Although not widely noted, the efforts of the Inter-Civic Council offered hope to those engaged in what Steele described as “the pain and the promise” of the civil rights movement (Steele, 27 September 1978). He later stated: “Where there is any power … as strong [and] as eternal as love using nonviolence, the promise will be fulfilled” (Steele, 27 September 1978).

Born on 7 February 1914, Steele was raised in the predominantly African American town of Gary, West Virginia, by his parents Lyde Bailor and Henry L. Steele, a miner with the United States Steel and Coal Corporation. Steele began preaching at the young age of 15. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1935, and three years later earned his BA degree from Morehouse College. After nearly a year of service at Friendship Baptist Church in northeast Georgia, Steele was called to Hall Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, during the spring of 1939. In 1941 he married Lois Brock. Steele spent nine years in Montgomery and four at Springfield Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, before accepting the pastorate at Bethel Baptist Church in Tallahassee in 1952.

While serving as head of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, Steele was also elected president of the Inter-Civic Council (ICC), an organization formed in May 1956, to direct a bus boycott initiated by black students at Florida A&M University. The ICC absorbed members from all walks of life within the black community, involv

C. K. Steele

Steele decided he wanted to become a preacher at an early age. In 1938 he began attending Morehouse College, a well-known all-black college in Atlanta. He then served as minister at churches in Montgomery, Ala., and Augusta, Ga. In 1952, at age 38, he moved to the Bethel Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Fla., where he served as minister until his death in 1980.

In 1956, after two black college students were arrested for sitting in the “whites only” section of a city bus in Tallahassee, he organized a bus boycott. Following the famous example of the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery. Ala., the black community of Tallahassee's act of civil disobedience remained a nonviolent one. Steele remarked of the hostility and violence the boycotters faced at the hands of angry whites: “They have thrown rocks, they have smashed car windows, they have burned crosses. Well, I am happy to state here tonight that I have no fear of them and, praise God, I have no hate for them.” Former Florida governor LeRoy Collins commented years later that “the boycott hurt black people more than it did white people, in the sense that they needed that service more than white people did. But it showed the people of this community that they were very determined to right this wrong.” Two years later, the bus boycott ended triumphantly. Bus service in Tallahassee was finally integrated.

Steele also worked to integrate Tallahassee's schools, restaurants, theaters, and other public facilities. At the same time, he became a national figure in the civil rights movement. In 1957, he helped Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He served as its vice president, and participated in many national civil rights protests, including the famous march in Selma, Ala. His quest to improve the black community continued for the rest of his li