An armed group of white supremacists attacked a courthouse
guarded by a mostly-Black militia in the town of Colfax,
Louisiana on April 13, 1873. A bloodbath ensued, as the
militia surrendered and the white supremacists carried out a
day-long campaign of terror that came to be known as the
Colfax Massacre.
ROSS SIMPSON
In the name of African American voting rights, 3,200 civil rights demonstrators in Alabama, led by Martin Luther King Jr., began
an historic march from Selma to Montgomery, the state’s capital. Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents were
on hand to provide safe passage for the march, which twice had
been turned back by Alabama state police at Selma’s Edmund
Pettus Bridge.
On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr.was born in Atlanta,
Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate
degree in theology and in 1955 helped organize the first major
protest of the African American civil rights movement: the
successful Montgomery Bus Boycott.
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for
combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.
In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition
towards poverty and the Vietnam War.
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was
fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-
story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation
workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet
struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was
pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He
was 39 years old.
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
ROSS SIMPSON
