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Dr King’s Prediction — BBC World News America has unearthed a fascinating clip of Dr Martin Luther King speaking to the BBC’s Bob McKenzie in 1964 in which Dr King predicts an African-American president “in less than 40 years.“
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AP: Freedom Ride To Washington — Black Americans ride the buses to witness history:

The act of riding a bus to push for change has played a significant role in black American history. Some students said they had been brought up to see struggle and celebration as part of their racial identity and they wanted a part of what their parents and grandparents had experienced.

Rosa Parks is credited with helping ignite the civil rights movement by refusing to get up from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 to allow a white passenger to sit down as mandated by law.

In 1963, tens of thousands of people rode buses to the capital for the March on Washington, during which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, widely regarded as the high point of the civil rights movement.

   Courtesy: GaryVarvel

Black and white activists rode buses together on “freedom rides” into Southern states in defiance of segregation laws. They were often met with violence.

In 1995, huge numbers again rode buses for the so-called Million Man March in Washington of African-American men.

For some people heading to Washington, Obama’s inauguration represents the fruition of decades of struggle. Civil rights leader Joseph Lowery, who was born in 1921 and attended the March on Washington, is due to give the benediction.

Reflecting in an interview on the 1963 march and its legacy, he said it was the most “emotionally challenging” moment of the civil rights movement to that point.

“It was the first time we had called on the nation … to join us in searching for jobs and justice and freedom,” said Lowery. “We didn’t know how the nation would respond.”

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