People seeking equal rights for blacks began demonstrating in Birmingham, Ala., in the late 1950s, and about 2,500 children and adults were arrested when the protests climaxed in 1963 with the participation of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
King was arrested and penned his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while in custody in April.
The letter, written in response to white ministers who urged pursuing civil rights only in the courts, included King’s belief that: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
In the three years since Alabama passed a law allowing people charged during nonviolent civil-rights demonstrations to have their records expunged, officials have not received a single pardon application from anyone arrested in the Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950s, the Birmingham demonstrations of 1963 or the Selma voting-rights marches of 1965.
The Associated Press
