Martin Luther King Didn't Let Violence Stop His Mission

Taking a look at the Civil Rights era, CNN is reporting that from the time he first emerged as a civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived with the threat of death, but he never wavered in his commitment to non-violence.

"Dr. King made it rather clear that the cause that we were fighting for was not only worth living for, but it was worth dying for, if need be," said Fred Gray, the lawyer who helped King lead the fight to desegregate city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956.

A month after blacks began a bus boycott, a midnight caller warned King that he would be sorry he ever came to Montgomery. Three days later, his house was bombed.

Angry blacks gathered outside King's home, but Gray said, "Once he found out his family was safe and secure, he simply went out, talked to the crowd, and told them to go home, and they went."

King knew what could happen when he led demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, facing fire hoses and police dogs in an effort to desegregate downtown businesses.

Longtime aide Andrew Young said, "Going to Birmingham was to him the possibility of an imminent death."

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