Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Court

Here are some reported cases involving Dr. King.  In King v. State, 119 S.E.2d 77 (Ga. App. 1961), the court upheld a conviction for a traffic offense but vacated the sentence of 12 months in the work house. Dr. King was a defendant in Gilligan v. King, 264 N.Y.S.2d 309 (Sup. Ct. 1965), aff’d, 290 N.Y.S.2d 1014 (App. Div. 1968), a libel action pursued by a NYPD Lieutenant who killed a 15 year old black which set off rioting in New York. Article here.  He was also a defendant in the New York Times v. Sullivan action, a libel case in which the plaintiff was a police executive criticized for brutalizing and/or failing to protect protesters. Parks v. New York Times Co., 195 F. Supp. 919 (M.D. Ala. 1961), rev’d, 308 F.2d 474 (5th Cir. 1962), certiorari denied, 376 U.S. 949 (1964). As Mark Eckenwiler pointed out, he was convicted of criminal contempt for violating an injunction against picketing in Walker v. City of Birmingham, 181 So.2d 493 (Ala. 1965), aff'd, 388 U.S. 307 (1967). He was the plaintiff in King v. Mister Maestro, Inc., 224 F. Supp. 101 (S.D.N.Y. 1963), an intellectual property action protecting his copyright on the “I Have a Dream” speech, and in Bond v. Floyd, 251 F. Supp. 333 (N.D. Ga.), rev’d, 385 U.S. 116 (1966), an action protecting Julian Bond’s right to a seat in the Georgia legislature in spite of his opposition to the Vietnam war. Here is his Letter from Birmingham Jail.  UPDATE: LaborLawProf has a good post, and TalkLeft has a nice collection of comments and links. [Jack Chin]