On the evening of April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on
the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where he had traveled to support a
sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots
swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a
national day of mourning.
On April 3, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his Southern Christian Leadership Conference and their partners in the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights led a campaign of protests, marches and sit-ins against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. By April 12, King was in prison along with many of his fellow activists. While imprisoned, King penned an open letter now known as his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a full-throated defense of the Birmingham protest campaign that is now regarded as one of the greatest texts of the civil rights movement.
On April 12, , King and dozens of his fellow protestors were arrested for continuing to demonstrate in the face of an injunction obtained by Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor. Connor, who had just lost the mayoral election, remains one of the most notorious pro-segregationists in American history thanks to the brutal methods his forces employed against the Birmingham protestors that summer. The man who had won the election, Albert Boutwell, was also a segregationist, and he was one of many who accused “outsiders”—he clearly meant King—of stirring up trouble in Birmingham. As he sat in a solitary jail cell without even a mattress to sleep on, King began to pen a response to his critics on some scraps of paper. …read more
history.com
Martin Luther King Jr. is jailed; writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
HISTORY
April 11, 2022
A&E Television Networks
January 18, 2022
January 12, 2021
April 7th
April 8th
April 9th
April 10th
April 11th
April 12th
April 13th
April 14th
April 15th
April 16th
April 17th
April 18th
April 19th
April 20th
April 21st
April 22nd
April 23rd
April 24th
April 25th
April 26th
April 27th
April 28th
April 29th
April 30th
Source: nationaldaycalendar.com
1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. He had sighted the land the day before.
1776 – George Washington received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College .
1829 – James Carrington patented the coffee mill.
1860 – The first Pony Express riders left St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA. The trip across country took about 10 days. The Pony Express only lasted about a year and a half.
1865 – Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
1866 – Rudolph Eickemeyer and G. Osterheld patented a blocking and shaping machine for hats.
1882 – The American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back and killed by Robert Ford for a $5,000 reward. There was later controversy over whether it was actually Jesse James that had been killed.
1910 – Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America was climbed.
1933 – First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized “3.2” beer.
1936 – Richard Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and death of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh.
1942 – The Japanese began their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.
1946 – Lt. General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines.
1948 – U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to revive war-torn Europe. It was $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
1949 – Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis debuted on radio on the “Martin and Lewis Show”. The NBC program ran until 1952.
1953 – “TV Guide” was published for the first time.
1967 – The U.S. State Department said that Hanoi might be brainwashing American prisoners.
1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “mountaintop” speech just 24 hours before he was assassinated.
1968 – North Vietnam agreed to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.
1972 – Charlie Chaplin returned to the U.S. after a twenty-year absence.
1979 – Jane Byrne became the first female mayor in Chicago.
1982 – John Chancellor stepped down as anchor of the “The NBC Nightly News.” Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw became the co-anchors of the show.
1983 – It was reported that Vietnamese occupation forces had overrun a key insurgent base in western Cambodia.
1984 – Sikh terrorists killed a member of the Indian Parliament in his home.
1984 – Col. Lansana Konte became the new president of Guinea when the armed forces seized power after the death of Sekou Toure.
1985 – The U.S. charged that Israel violated the Geneva Convention by deporting Shiite prisoners.
1986 – The U.S. national debt hit $2 trillion.
1987 – Riots disrupted mass during the Pope’s visit to Santiago, Chili.
1993 – The Norman Rockwell Museum opened in Stockbridge, MA.
1996 – An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.
1996 – Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. He pled guilty in January 1998 to five Unabomber attacks in exchange for a life sentence without chance for parole.
1998 – The Dow Jones industrial average climbed above 9,000 for the first time.
2000 – A U.S. federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated U.S. antitrust laws by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors. Microsoft said that they would appeal the ruling.
2000 – The Nasdaq set a one-day record when it lost 349.15 points to close at 4,233.68.
2010 – The first Apple iPad was released.
Be a Seed for Change 
You must be logged in to post a comment.