The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Decatur

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Decatur. . [First panel] , Illegally sentenced in a DeKalb County court to four months of hard labor on a false traffic charge, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put systemic injustice on trial in the court of public opinion., [Second panel] , How Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s DeKalb Traffic Stop Changed History , This is the former site of DeKalb County's Civil and Criminal Court and Jail, where in October 1960 the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was sentenced, jailed and driven off in chains to serve a sentence of four months of hard labor for violating probation in a misdemeanor traffic case. Segregationists were hoping to send a message that would stifle the civil rights movement. Instead, the illegal sentence prompted Sen. John F. Kennedy to intercede with Southern politicians on King's behalf with only days to go before the presidential election, accelerating the civil rights movement and revealing the power of Black voters to bring change., Months after Georgia's segregationist Gov. Ernest Vandiver vowed to keep the rising civil rights leader “under surveillance at all times,” a DeKalb County officer pulled King over on Clifton Road. It was May 4, 1960, and King was driving a white woman, writer Lillian Smith, to Emory Hospital, where she was receiving cancer treatments. She had come for dinner at the home of Martin and Coretta Scott King, who had moved to Atlanta from Montgomery, Alabama, that February. King was driving a vehicle, borrowed from an Ebenezer Baptist Church parishioner, whose tag had expired. Smith insisted they were pulled over because she, as a white woman, was sharing a car with a Black man., Caption: The DeKalb Building in the 1950s., [Third panel] , King quietly answered his traffic summons on Sept. 23, 1960, appearing before Judge J. Oscar Mitchell in Decatur. The expired tag charge was dropped after King showed that a renewal application had already been submitted. But Mitchell convicted King of the misdemeanor offense of “driving without a license,” based on King's use of his Alabama driver's license more than 90 days after moving to Georgia, and gave him a suspended sentence of 12 months “on the public works camp,” otherwise known as a chain gang. King paid a $25 fine to resolve the misdemeanor and his lawyer agreed in court to Mitchell's probation terms, which were to avoid violating the law in any respect., Atlanta's Students Begin to Move , The civil rights movement was heating up in 1960, threatening efforts by Mayor William B. Hartsfield to promote Atlanta as a business-friendly standout in the Jim Crow South. But the demands of Black people to be treated equally went largely unacknowledged by the presidential candidates, Republican Richard M. Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy, whose campaign advisors figured they couldn't win the South by challenging segregation., This dynamic changed after Black college students at the six Atlanta University Center schools, inspired by the sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C., formed the Atlanta Student Movement and defied the go-slow advice of their elders. The students launched boycotts and sit-ins involving waves of arrests, hoping to pressure store owners to desegregate. But as spring stretched into summer, their movement was losing steam., King, at that point, had yet to spend a night in jail. Many white Americans knew him only as the leader of the successful Montgomery bus boycott. Segregationists were holding firm; despite the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling declaring “separate but equal” doctrines to be unconstitutional, public schools and many facilities remained racially divided across the South., Caption: MLK and student protestors following their arrest at the Rich's lunch counter in downtown Atlanta., [Fourth panel] , Meanwhile, the NAACP discouraged the civil disobedience tactics of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Even Martin Luther King Sr., nationally influential as senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, urged his son to stay out of the sit-ins., A ‘Betrayal’ Sends King to ‘Klan Country’ , But the students' leader, Lonnie King, reminded Martin Luther King of his father's sermon, that “you can't lead from the back,” and persuaded him to join their effort to desegregate Atlanta's public facilities. On Oct. 19, 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. asked to be served in the whites-only dining room of Rich's department store, and was among dozens arrested that day for trespassing in segregated stores across Atlanta. He was handcuffed after politely pointing out that he had spent some $2,000 at the store that year, yet was denied a meal solely because of the color of his skin., The students were taken to the Fulton County Jail, and with King among them, their treatment became national news. Hartsfield began negotiating, describing Atlanta as “a city too busy … to hate,” which would become the city's enduring motto. Eager to end the Black community's boycott of the segregated stores and keep the sit-ins from escalating, Hartsfield brokered a deal: The department store owners would drop the charges and promise to eventually desegregate lunch counters in exchange for a moratorium on the sit-ins. But cries of betrayal rang out when the activists realized that King remained in jail after everyone else was released. Unknown to others in the movement, King's arrest had violated the probation terms set by Judge Mitchell. DeKalb Solicitor Jack Smith ordered King to appear in Mitchell's courtroom. Coretta Scott King feared for his life, saying DeKalb was “Klan Country.”, ‘This is the Cross We Must Bear’ , On Oct. 25, 1960, presiding over a crowded DeKalb County courtroom, Mitchell dismissed King's testimony and statements by Atlanta's college presidents about King's good character. He pounded his gavel and declared King in violation of his probation, sentencing him to four months' hard labor. King's attorney, Donald Hollowell, immediately asked for King's release on bond pending appeal, but Mitchell denied that, too, and sent King upstairs to the county jail., Caption: MLK is led in handcuffs, after his release from Atlanta, about to be transported to DeKalb County to face charges that he violated his parole., [Fifth panel] , Before dawn the next day, King was transferred to Reidsville State Prison, where he wrote a letter to his wife, saying “This is the cross we must bear for the freedom of our people.” Worried King would be killed, his supporters appealed to Nixon and Kennedy to take public stands only days before the presidential election. The Republicans remained silent. Despite his reluctance to lose support among white Southern Democrats, John Kennedy called Coretta Scott King to express his concern, and his soon-to-be attorney general Robert Kennedy called Mitchell asking for King's release pending his appeal. With the Kennedys now publicly taking responsibility for the political consequences, Mitchell reversed himself on Oct. 26, setting bond at $2,000.

On Oct. 27, King was released from prison, and then returned on a charter flight to a jubilant crowd at Peachtree DeKalb airport., The Blue Bomb
King's father, who had endorsed Nixon only days earlier, led the celebration at Ebenezer Baptist Church that night, urging Black voters to switch their allegiances. His endorsement was reprinted in the “blue bomb,” a pamphlet mass-produced by Kennedy aides and Black church workers. More than a million copies praising the Kennedys' intervention appeared in Black churches around the nation on the Sunday before the election. Black voters in key states turned out for the Democrat in huge numbers, providing the margin that enabled Kennedy to win the presidency., A Georgia appeals court would rule in 1961 that Mitchell's sentence was illegal. By then, this pivotal episode had already marked a turning point. Locally, it inspired transformative changes in DeKalb County and Decatur. Nationally, it elevated King's stature, energized the civil rights movement and by showing the power of Black voters to decide elections, revealed how the political system can work for all Americans., [Sixth panel] , The Commemorating King Campaign , Decatur High School Students Advocate for Georgia Historical Marker , This historical marker resulted from the efforts of a group of Decatur High School students who researched the episode that unfolded here and worked to raise awareness about its importance. They interviewed participants and observers of the events and presented findings to the Decatur City Commission and the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, earning support and inspiring community donations for the marker's $5,000 cost. These eyewitnesses to history included:, Mayor Emerita Elizabeth Wilson , Elizabeth Wilson said King's “strength and determination” in Decatur inspired her refusal to be intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan's march in Decatur square, her courage to obtain the first library card issued to an African American in DeKalb County, her insistence on integrating the city's schools and her willingness to run for mayor., Actor and activist Charles Black , “Movements were inspired all across the country after that moment,” Charles Black said. “Folks made the connection that King's arrest made the difference in getting Kennedy elected. That's a big deal.”, DeKalb County Judge Clarence Seeliger , “That a prestigious man who was standing up for the rights of all our citizens, as well as African Americans, could be abused in such a manner, I think sent a message across the country,” Clarence Seeliger said. “Dr. King should be remembered for that, and sad to say, so should Judge Mitchell, because of what he did, and what he represented.”, Dr. Roslyn Pope , “The change is not complete,” Roslyn Pope said. “I think the recognition of something momentous that happened right here should inspire people to say, ‘well, we don't want this anymore. We don't want this to happen again.’”, Caption: Genesis Reddicks, Clarence Seeliger, Daxton Pettus, Charles Black, Emma Callicutt, Liza Watson, Elizabeth Wilson, Adelaide Taylor, Katrina M. Walker, Roslyn Pope and Michael Warren.