civil rights

Admirers of Dr. Martin Luther King, junior have the opportunity to snag a unique piece of memorabilia. An auction house is offering pages of an old jail record signed by Dr. King while he was incarcerated in Alabama in 1963. It's there that King wrote his famous "letter from the Birmingham jail." A jail worker rescued the documents which feature a dozen King signatures.

ATLANTA (AP) — John Lewis will lie in repose at the Georgia capitol in his hometown of Atlanta in one of the last memorial services for the late Democratic congressman before he's buried. 

Members of the public will be able to pay their respects to Lewis on Wednesday at the state capitol rotunda following a ceremony to honor him. A private burial service in Atlanta is scheduled for Thursday.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Religious faith was a lifelong constant for Rep. John Lewis. 

He spent his boyhood in Alabama preaching to a make-believe congregation of chickens and siblings. He went on to be inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to learn nonviolence protests tactics from ministers and other teachers.

SELMA, Ala. (AP) — On the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, John Lewis and a line of nonviolent marchers were beaten and tear-gassed by Alabama state troopers in Selma. 

The state-sanctioned violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge stunned the nation and helped spur the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act. It also propelled Lewis on to a global stage as a hero of the U.S. civil rights movement.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Autherine Lucy Foster, the first African-American student to attend the University of Alabama, received an honorary doctorate degree Friday from the university where her presence brought mobs of protesters in 1956.

The Tuscaloosa News reported that Foster, 89 received the degree during graduation ceremonies. She enrolled at the all-white university in 1956. However, she was expelled three days later after her presence brought protests and threats against her life.

Foster received a standing ovation Friday, news outlets report.

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has rescinded its decision to honor political activist and scholar Angela Davis following unspecified complaints.

Davis is a Birmingham native who has spent decades fighting for civil rights. She was an active member of the Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Communist Party USA. She's also an outspoken supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

The four girls killed in a church bombing in Birmingham in 1963 were remembered over the weekend during a memorial service on the attack’s 55th anniversary.

Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson were all killed September 15, 1963 when a bomb placed by Ku Klux Klan members ripped through Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Saturday’s service also honored two boys, Johnny Robinson, Jr. and Virgil Ware, killed in separate incidents shortly after the bombing.

The state of Alabama has a rich and painful history when it comes to the civil rights movement. Researchers recently uncovered new evidence about a lesser-known chapter of that story.

The Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Task Force has located a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at a service in Tuscaloosa. They also found video of what came to be known as “Bloody Tuesday”, when a peaceful march to protest segregation was met with beatings, tear gas, fire hoses and arrests.

The state of Alabama is going under the microscope again in terms of civil rights policy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's civil rights office says it will investigate the Alabama Department of Environmental Management's civil rights policies.

Al.com reports The EPA's External Civil Rights Compliance Office issued a letter earlier this week stating it will investigate whether ADEM has adopted grievance procedures assuring the prompt and fair resolution of complaints. These procedures are required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A company that sought to redevelop a historic hotel overlooking the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma says that city leaders broke their contract for the hotel's sale.

The Janee Hotel Corp. made the allegations in a federal lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court.

The Illinois-based company says it offered to purchase the St. James Hotel hotel for $100,000 and commit $4.5 million to redevelop it. The company maintains that city councilors voted in August to accept the offer, but later backed out.

A Madison police officer is returning to active duty today after being acquitted of civil rights charges earlier this year.

Eric Parker is back on the Madison Police Department and is returning to active duty today. The move comes after acting police chief Major Jim Cooke decided Parker’s sidewalk stop and takedown of Sureshbhai Patel in February 2015 did not violate department policy.

Parker faced state and federal charges after slamming the 58-year-old man to the ground during a confrontation. Patel was partially paralyzed and underwent spinal surgery.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham will host a federal Department of Justice official, who will speak on civil rights and on an outreach program.

Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta will discuss federal efforts to protect civil liberties and rights of minorities and immigrants from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts.

UAB officials say Gupta worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP before joining the Department of Justice.

Demetrius Newton, a civil rights attorney who represented icons like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. before becoming the first black person to serve as speaker pro tem of the Alabama House, has died. He was 85.

Rep. John Rogers of Birmingham, a longtime friend of Newton, says he was notified by the lawmaker's family that Newton died Wednesday morning.

Newton was former city attorney for Birmingham and had served in the Legislature since 1986.

The board of the Alabama Public Historical Sites and Parks Improvement Corporation has authorized $1.2 million in bond money for a landmark voting rights center in the capitol city.

A new facility at Alabama State University will be home to the last stop on the route memorialized as the Voting Rights Trail, officials said Tuesday.

Finance Director Marquita Davis told Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey and House Speaker Mike Hubbard the center had been funded in 2001, but the project didn't get off the ground.

A civil rights group that tracks extremist groups warns that President Obama's tenure and the gun control debate after the Connecticut school shooting have led to surging numbers of anti-government "patriot" groups.

The Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday reported the rising numbers as it released its annual report on extremist groups.

The number of patriot groups, one category of extremist organizations tracked by the center, has risen dramatically over the past four years, from 149 groups in 2008 to 1,360 today.