The Founding Chairman of the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Lonnie King and a handful of young activists including Julian Bond on March 15, 1960, launched the Atlanta Student Movement demonstrations to force area businesses to desegregate. King and his friends organized sit-ins and boycotts to demand integration of the stores, lunch counters, movie theaters and courthouses of Atlanta. The movement was co-organized by the Atlanta Inquirer newspaper and Hill Office Supplies.

King states “In pursuing our objectives, we employed sit-ins, kneel-ins, jail no bail, filed a law suit that integrated all recreational places in the city, with the exception of the golf courses, which had been desegregated previously via court order. As we pursued our objectives, we engaged in non-violent civil disobedience and even though we were battered, beaten, spat on, hit in the head by working class whites, and had acid thrown in our face; we never fought back. We knew that the time had come to rid America of the racism that imbued the moral fiber of the South and had permanently subordinated Negroes as the "other" without any rights.”