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MLK Plots Selma Voting Drive

Jan. 15, 1965 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told 800 cheering Negroes last night in Selma, Ala., he would begin a massive test of the 1964 civil rights law in Selma Monday. (Pictured earlier today in his office at the Southern Leadership Conference, Dr. King points to Selma on a map.)

To the shouting, clapping, and singing Negroes jammed in a church, Dr, King declared that the integration drive would be “Selma’s opportunity to repent.”

The civil rights leader, recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said the testing would cover voter registration and extend into all areas of accommodations — “every restaurant, every theater, every motel on the highway and in the community.”

Selma became known as a segregation holdout last summer when hundreds of Negroes were arrested after the civil rights law was passed.

Dr. King also announced that desegregation drives would begin all over Alabama, but principally in 10 counties of the agrarian “black belt.”

“We will challenge the registration offices by a massive march on the courthouse,” Dr. King said. “We will march by the hundreds. We will announce to the nation that we are determined to vote.”



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© 2024 by Joe Rubenstein

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