October 14, 1964

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in the modern civil rights movement. At the age of 35, King became the youngest person to receive the award. During the award presentation on Dec. 10, 1964, Chairman Gunnar Jahn of the Norwegian Nobel Committee described King as “the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence.” King accepted the award on behalf of the entire movement and advocated for the continued use of nonviolent resistance in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott met in Boston in the early 1950s. King was pursuing a doctoral degree at Boston University and Scott was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple married on June 18, 1953, in Heiberger, Perry County, where Scott had been raised. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress)

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King led thousands of protesters during the Selma to Montgomery March in March 1965. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, property of The Birmingham News)

Fred Lee Shuttlesworth (left), Ralph David Abernathy (center), and Martin Luther King Jr. (right) march on Good Friday on April 12, 1963, in Birmingham. The men were later arrested, prompting King to write his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was founded in 1877 in Montgomery and was central to the city’s civil rights efforts. Vernon Johns, an early civil rights leader, led the congregation from 1947-1952, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was the church’s pastor from 1954-1960. The church is a National Historic Landmark. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, AlabamaNewsCenter)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.