The 1960s dawned with a wave of student sit-ins, following by King's policy of passive resistance. Black students throughout the south occupied coffee shops and lunch counters which still practised segregation, and got a savage response from the police. Many were beaten and arrested.

One of the leaders expressed their policy like this: "Don't curse back if cursed or abused... Remember love and non-violence... Remember the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King."

King supported the movement and joined a sit-in in Atlanta. He was arrested, and although the charge was dropped, he was imprisoned for an earlier traffic offence. During the couple of days he was in prison, his wife Coretta got a phone call from Senator John Kennedy, offering his sympathy and support. King had met Kennedy before to discuss racial politics, and although King never officially endorsed him, the support he gained from black voters in general is said to have been decisive in winning him the presidency.

Over the following years, the situation in the south grew increasingly fraught. Demonstrations were harshly put down. King went to jail repeatedly. In 1963, in solitary confinement in Birmingham, Alabama, the bastion of segregation, he was called upon by white ministers to stop the campaign, and wrote the famous Letter From Birmingham Jail defending the necessity of it.

On release, he organised a march of 6,000 children and young people in Birmingham. The police chief turned dogs and water canons on them. The confrontation was repeated for several days until the city conceded and agreed to stop the worst aspects of segregation.

Next: Free at last!