Virginia Prescott: It s
Georgia Today. I m Virginia Prescott, in for Steve Fennessy. As the nation celebrates Black History Month, we re taking you back to an often-overlooked chapter in Georgia s civil rights history. Before the Selma to Montgomery march, before the “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was sentenced to four months of hard labor for an outstanding traffic violation. It s October 1960, just weeks before Election Day. Dr. King is arrested for taking part in a lunch counter sit-in at Rich s department store in Atlanta. He was then transferred to DeKalb County, sentenced, jailed and then taken in the dead of night to a Georgia state prison. Thanks to some back-channel, even rogue moves by the Kennedy campaign, Dr. King was released.