Trailblazers who paved the way to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and those leading today. | SPLC

After he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement for protesting segregation in April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. penned his landmark Letter from Birmingham Jail, urging fellow clergy to support his work against racial injustice.

In May of that year, hundreds of peacefully demonstrating children were attacked in Birmingham, Alabama, with fire hoses, batons and menacing police dogs.

Just days later, the A.G. Gaston Motel – a Black-owned establishment where white business owners, city officials and civil rights leaders had reached a compromise to desegregate the city – was bombed, and four people suffered minor injuries. Read more...