Dr. King was also active in Alabama's largest city, Birmingham. In the spring of 1963, Dr. King and his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization he helped to found in 1957, led a nonviolent campaign in Birmingham to end the so-called Jim Crow Laws. Dr. King and the SCLC's efforts helped to end racial segregation in public places in Birmingham, leading the way for Jim Crow Laws across the south to crumble over the next decade.
Perhaps Martin Luther King's best-known actions in Alabama were the three marches he led from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 to protest voting rights for black Americans. The first two marches were met with violence. The first march, held on March 7, 1965, was called "Bloody Sunday" after police attacked approximately 600 protestors with billy clubs and tear gas. The second march, on March 9, saw more than 2,500 meet resistance after crossing Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge. In the intervening week, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson ruled that Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fellow protestors had the right to protest under the First Amendment of the Constitution. On March 16, King and other voting rights activists began their march rom Selma to Montgomery with the protection of 2,000 U.S. Army soldiers and 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard. The march ended in Montgomery on March 24, 1965. Today, the Selma to Montgomery March is memorialized as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.
Note that this article merely touches on a few aspects of Dr. King's life. About's guide to American History has a more comprehensive profile on Martin Luther King, Jr..
