MLK 1956 Premium Cotton T-Shirt
Mugshot Story
On 21 February 1956, five weeks into the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a Montgomery County grand jury indicted 89 Black activists for violating an Alabama law that forbade conspiracies to obstruct a lawful business. Twenty-seven-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. turned himself in that afternoon, posed for the booking camera with the slate reading “7089,” and was released on a $1,000 bond the same day.
King went to trial a month later. On 22 March 1956 he was convicted, fined $500 (or 386 days in jail if he refused to pay), and sentenced to twelve months’ probation. Rather than derail the boycott, the arrest catapulted King onto the national stage: the quietly resolute mugshot you see above became a rallying emblem of non-violent resistance, while the boycott itself pressed on to victory after 381 days, ending legal bus segregation in Montgomery.
