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movies A 50-Mile March, Nearly 50 Years Later Ava DuVernay’s film “Selma” follows civil rights demonstrators in March 1965 across an Alabama bridge and into a new era for black Americans. Read more

SELMA, Ala. — Civil-rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King jr., was arrested today [Feb. 1] while attempting to lead a mass march of 300 Negroes on the Dallas county courthouse to protest voter-registration procedures. The Negroes, who were walking en masse from a church, were taken into custody on orders from Selma’s Public Safety Director Wilson Baker on charges of parading without a permit. Mr. Baker stopped the procession near the church, where the Negroes had assembled. He told them: ‘‘Each and every one of you is under arrest for parading without a permit.’’ After an hour of waiting in the jail, Dr. King was released without charges filed against him. But he was quickly rearrested when he did not obey an officer’s orders to leave the scene. This was the first time he has been arrested since he received the Nobel Peace prize last month. — New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, Feb. 2, 1965