(CNN) An Alabama county has passed a resolution to preserve a jail cell where civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is believed to have been held months before he was assassinated in 1968.

The cell, on the seventh floor of what is now the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, is the only one that was not removed when the building underwent renovations in 1996.

The cell in the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham where Martin Luther King, Jr. was last held before his assassination in April 1968.

"In order for Jefferson County to truly move forward, we must first recognize our past mistakes, take corrective action, and move forward with a sincere desire to embrace people from all walks of life," said Jefferson County Commission President Pro Tem Lashunda Scales in a press release.

The commission unanimously approved the resolution Thursday to memorialize the cell -- the last existing one at the old Jefferson County Jail, Scales told CNN.

King spent three days in the cell in late October and early November 1967. His arrest was triggered by a civil rights protest that he and several others had organized in Birmingham more than four years earlier.

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