Remembering the 1964 Civil Rights March in Frankfort

On March 5, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led ten thousand people on a peaceful Civil Rights march in Frankfort, Kentucky. The rally supported a bill to desegregate public accommodations in Kentucky. Dr. King and several other leaders gave speeches backing the proposed bill and met with Gov. Breathitt. After the march, a group of people led by Frank Stanley, Jr., staged a hunger strike in the House gallery to coerce legislators to pass the bill. It never made it out of committee, but the subsequent Civil Rights Act of 1966 was passed in large part to the influence garnered by the march and hunger strike. For further details and photographs from this march, see the Jim Curtis photograph collection on Civil Rights in Kentucky.