The photograph is one for the ages: During a motorcade in his honor through downtown Baltimore, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. reached out and grasped the outstretched hands of three joyous supporters. It was Oct. 31, 1964, and the civil rights leader was in town to spur the city’s 140,000 registered Blacks to vote in the presidential election, three days hence.
These were stirring times for King, then 35. Two weeks earlier, he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming its youngest recipient. In September, he had met with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican. Now, King was finishing a whirlwind six-city tour of the country, urging African Americans to go to the polls on Nov. 3 and vote for President Lyndon B. Johnson. The alternative, King said, was untenable.