Heed Their Rising Voices
"Heed Their Rising Voices" is a 1960 newspaper advertisement published in The New York Times. It was published on March 29, 1960 and paid for by the "Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South". The purpose of the advertisement was to attract attention and steer support towards Martin Luther King Jr. A recent felony charge of perjury was leveled against King and could have resulted in a lengthy imprisonment.[1] The headline of the advertisement was drawn from a phrase used in the New York Times editorial, "Amendment XV", published on March 19, 1960.[2][3] The advertisement contained numerous factual inaccuracies, such as claiming that Dr King had been arrested 7 times, when it was actually 4, and police "ringing" the Alabama State College Campus, when they actually only deployed near it.[4] These errors in the advertisement became the source of a libel suit in the United States Supreme Court landmark case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).[2]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr., Nos. 7399 and 9593". The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Stanford University. 7 July 2017. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
- ^ a b Hall, Kermit L.; Patrick, John J. (2006). "Freedom of the Press in a Free Society". The Pursuit of Justice: Supreme Court Decisions that Shaped America. Oxford University Press. pp. 141–149. ISBN 9780195311891.
- ^ "Amendment XV". The New York Times. March 19, 1960. p. 20.
- ^ "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan". Supreme Court of the United States. 376: 259 – via JSTOR.
Further reading
[edit]- Hall, Kermit L.; Urofsky, Melvin I. (2011). New York Times V. Sullivan: Civil Rights, Libel Law, and the Free Press. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 9780700618033.
 | This civil rights movement–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |