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"Heed Their Rising Voices" is a 1960 newspaper advertisement published in ''
''Heed Their Rising Voices''
"Heed Their Rising Voices" is a 1960 newspaper advertisement published in ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. It was published on March 29, 1960 and paid for by the "Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South". The purpose of the advertisement was to attract attention and steer support towards Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
A recent felony charge of perjury was leveled against King and could have resulted in a lengthy imprisonment. The headline of the advertisement was drawn from a phrase used in the ''New York Times'' editorial, "Amendment XV", published on March 19, 1960. The advertisement became the source of a libel suit
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
in the United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case ''New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
''New York Times Co. v. Sullivan'', 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's freedom of speech protections limit the ability of American public officials to sue for ...
'' (1964).
See also
*Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
*Text of''Heed Their Rising Voices''
References
Further reading
* 1960 in American politics Advertisements Civil rights movement Martin Luther King Jr. Works originally published in The New York Times {{civil-rights-movement-stub