January 25, 1899

Civil rights activist and minister Solomon Seay Sr. was born in Macon County. Referred to as the “spiritual leader” of the civil rights movement by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Seay played a key role in several early efforts of the civil rights movement across the South. Seay served as an active member of Montgomery’s Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Montgomery Improvement Association, advised King on the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and was a defendant in The New York Times v. Sullivan U.S. Supreme Court case. He also served as a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church for nearly 50 years.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Portrait of Rev. Solomon Seay, Sr., pointing to a bullet wound which had been inflicted by a white youth in a passing automobile in Montgomery, 1961. (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

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