In May 1957, upwards of 22,000 people gathered to mark the third anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education. Martin Luther King Jr gave a speech, which came to be known as Give Us the Ballot. An excerpt of which reads: “Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights…Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law…Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of good will.”