Jan. 18, 1965 - A white segregationist (top right) punched and kicked Dr. Martin Luther King (lower right) in a hotel lobby in Selma, Ala., today. The attack came after Dr. King, winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, had led a drive against racial barriers that was only partly successful.
Dr. King was not seriously hurt by the two punches and two kicks. He later took a pill for a headache.
The attacker, a gaunt-faced man with a stubble of beard, was identified as Jimmy George Robinson, 26, a member of the National States Rights Party. Dr. King said the man was a “symptom of a sickness in our country.”
Robinson had approached Dr. King from the rear as the minister was signing into a previously segregated hotel. Robinson slugged him on the right temple. Then he swung again and glanced a blow off Dr. King’s right cheek.
As he was grabbed and his arms pinned, Robinson kicked twice at Dr. King’s groin, connecting lightly on the left thigh.
Police quickly stepped in and arrested the segregationist.
In the assault on racial barriers, Negroes were served peacefully at three all-white restaurants. But although 300 Negroes were allowed to enter the courthouse, not one was able to take the lengthy voter registration test.
Dr. King reported that they were given numbers, sent out of the back door, and “herded into an alley like animals” to wait until their numbers were called. They were never called, and Dr. King said they would return tomorrow.
The only other incident of the day came when police arrested as a “suspicious person” a member of the American Nazi Party who sat in a restaurant with his face blackened and wearing black tights.
He was identified as Robert Lloyd, apparently the same man who invaded the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on the opening day of Congress, also in blackface, shouting, “I’ze the Mississippi delegation.” The offensive remark was a reference to an attempt by a predominantly Negro delegation to be seated in Congress.

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