page_619 < previous page page_619 next page > Page 619 years. Then southern black college students launched a wave of sit-in protests in 1960. Although King sympathized with their movement and spoke at the founding meeting of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960, he soon became the target of criticisms from SNCC activists. Even King's joining a student sit-in and his subsequent arrest in October 1960 did not allay the tensions. (After the arrest presidential candidate John F. Kennedy's sympathetic telephone call to King's wife, Coretta Scott King, helped attract crucial black support for Kennedy's campaign.) Conflicts between King and the younger militants were also evident when SCLC and SNCC assisted the Albany (Georgia) movement's campaign of mass protests in 19611962. After achieving few of their objectives in Albany, King and his staff initiated a major campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, where white police officials were notorious for their antiblack attitudes. In 1963, clashes between unarmed black demonstrators and police with attack dogs and fire hoses generated newspaper headlines throughout the world. Subsequent mass demonstrations in many communities culminated in a march on August 28, 1963, attracting more than 250,000 protesters to Washington, D.C. Addressing the marchers from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered his famous I Have a Dream oration. During the year following the march, King's renown as a nonviolent leader grew, and, in 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite the accolades, however, King faced strong challenges to his leadership. Malcolm X's message of self-defense and black nationalism expressed the anger of northern urban blacks more effectively than did King's moderation, and in 1966 King encountered strong criticism from "black power" proponent Stokely Carmichael. Shortly afterward, white counterprotestors in Chicago physically assaulted King during an unsuccessful effort to transfer nonviolent protest techniques to the North. Nevertheless, King remained committed to nonviolence. Early in 1968, he initiated a "poor people's campaign" to confront economic problems not addressed by civil rights reforms. King's ability to achieve his objectives was also limited by the increasing resistance he encountered from national political leaders. As urban racial violence escalated, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover intensified his efforts to discredit King, and King's public criticism of American intervention in the Vietnam War soured his relations with the Johnson administration. When he delivered his last speech during a bitter sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, he admitted, "We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop." The following evening, April 4, 1968, he was assassinated by James Earl Ray. After his death, King remained a controversial symbol of the civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence and condemned by others for his insurgent views. In 1986 King's birthday, January 15, became a federal holiday. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 19541963 (1988); David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986); David L. Lewis, King: A Critical Biography (1970). CLAYBORNE CARSON See also Civil Rights Movement; Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King Philip See Philip (King Philip). King Philip's War King Philip's War of 16751676 (also known as Metacom's Rebellion) marked the last major effort by the Indians of southern New England to drive out the English settlers. Led by Metacom, the Pokunoket chief called "King Philip" by the English, the bands known today as Wampanoag Indians joined with the Nipmucks, Pocumtucks, and Narragansetts in a bloody uprising. It lasted fourteen months and destroyed twelve frontier towns. Although the sequence of events leading to the outbreak of war is unclear, the Indians' re- Â < previous page page_619 next page >