Martin Luther King, Jr. - Arrests

On 27 June, B. Tartt Bell, executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, wrote King about the impending U.S.

Mr. E. D. Nixon
647 Clinton Avenue
Montgomery 8, Alabama

Dear Brother Nixon:

In the summer of 1958 Lewis met with King at Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church to discuss his interest in applying for admission to segregated Troy State University.¹ King, Abernathy, and Fred Gray encouraged Lewis to apply, King reportedly telling him: “We will get the money tonight the legal battle. .

King was arrested in Montgomery on Wednesday morning, 3 September, while trying to enter the courtroom at the hearing of Edward Davis, a man accused of attacking Ralph Abernathy.¹ King was charged with loitering after refusing to obey a request from police to “move on.” Protesting the use of undue force, King complained that the officers “tried to break my arm, they grabbed my collar and choked me and when they got me to the cell, they kicked me.”

On 20 October Birmingham police arrested thirteen African Americans for violating an ordinance mandating segregated seating on city buses.

Hours after his conviction for violating Alabama’s antiboycott law, King declares that “the protest is still on” to the thousands gathered at Holt Street Baptist Church.

King drove home on Thursday afternoon with church secretary Lilie Thomas and a Morehouse friend, Robert Williams. On the way King picked up a few passengers at a carpool station and was questioned by the police. Two motorcycle policemen followed as he drove away and stopped him for driving thirty miles per hour in a twenty-five zone. King was arrested and taken to Montgomery City Jail and spent some time there before being released. That night the MIA held seven mass meetings to satisfy the crowds interested in King's arrest.

This handwritten letter, composed on lined paper from the same notebook in which King drafted his arraignment statement, may have been intended for the female protesters arrested during the Atlanta sit-ins.¹

Hello girls,

At a packed public hearing on 25 October, DeKalb County judge J. Oscar Mitchell declared King’s involvement in the Rich’s sit-in a violation of his probation and sentenced him to four months hard labor at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville. An SCLC press release issued the following day reported that Mitchell’s decision “struck the hundreds of King supporters like a bombshell. Mrs. King wept quietly, Dr. King, Sr. was visibly moved; many of the coeds of the Atlanta University system burst into tears.

Two days after his arrest, King comments on jailhouse conditions.¹

“Much to my chagrin, the jail is segregated, also. I suppose the thing that wears on me most is the dread monotony. Sixteen hours is a long time to spend within a few square feet with nothing creative to do.