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Newfound Records Dating Back To Civil Rights Era Add Greater Detail To The Movement

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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right, accompanied by Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, center, is booked by city police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 23, 1956. (Gene Herrick/AP)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right, accompanied by Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, center, is booked by city police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 23, 1956. (Gene Herrick/AP)

A big discovery from the civil rights era has been handed over to Alabama State University.

Maya McKenzie was an intern in 2013 at the Montgomery County circuit clerk's office in Alabama when she found a trove of legal documents inside a safe. One was a bail document signed by Martin Luther King Jr. after he was arrested during the Montgomery bus boycott that he organized.

There's also the arrest warrant for another key person involved in the boycott: Rosa Parks.

Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd speaks with McKenzie, now a lawyer living in Atlanta, about making the discovery and the documents' importance today.

Interview Highlights

On how she found the documents

"I was working with Tiffany McCord, who was the then-Montgomery County circuit clerk, and she asked me, the intern, to work on cleaning out a room of documents. She was just trying to get a lot of administrative things worked out. This was not the historical job that it turned out to be. I was going through boxes and boxes of old documents, and many of the documents were old, you could tell that they were damaged from being in contact with the environment, moisture and the rubber bands, I remember the rubber bands on many of the documents breaking off, because they were so damaged by being exposed to the elements.

"As I was going through I tried to make this an enjoyable experience, and so I would read some of the documents as I went through, and on a document I saw, 'M.L. King,' and I thought, 'Hmm, this is the civil rights era, this may be something here.' And so I kept it to the side, and towards the end of my search I said, 'Tiffany, hey, you should come look at these, tell me what you think.' "

Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal bond, filed on March 22, 1956. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)
Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal bond, filed on March 22, 1956. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)
Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal bond, filed on March 22, 1956. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)
Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeal bond, filed on March 22, 1956. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)

On the documents' importance today

"We can certainly draw parallels to things we see today, and that should embolden us to work even harder. I mean, I don't think at the time, the people involved with the Montgomery bus boycott really understood how their change would impact our nation. But they were working to bring a little bit of equality and equal opportunity to this mode of transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. If we work and we remain diligent, that work will speak for itself down the line."

A transcript of the record and proceedings in the case of the City of Montgomery vs. Rosa Parks in 1955. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)
A transcript of the record and proceedings in the case of the City of Montgomery vs. Rosa Parks in 1955. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)
A transcript of the record and proceedings in the case of the City of Montgomery vs. Rosa Parks in 1955. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)
A transcript of the record and proceedings in the case of the City of Montgomery vs. Rosa Parks in 1955. (Used by permission of The Alabama State University Archives, on loan from the Montgomery County, Ala. Circuit Clerk)

On why it took so long for the documents to be discovered

"I'm not sure. I think Tiffany McCord, who was the circuit clerk at the time, tried to reach out to previous circuit clerks to divine some type of intent, to figure out why they were stored in the safe. And I'm not sure.

"But ultimately, there's a quote that is often used in the black church: 'May be the works I've done speak for me.' And I think about that quote when I think about why these documents are still available to us now, why they were kept away then and we have now found them. Because ultimately, the work that's done, the things that are positive for the universe, they'll be brought to light and they'll have their place. Now, it wasn't back then in the 1950s during the bus boycott, but in 2013 and now in 2018, we're able to celebrate that moment, celebrate that courage and that fortitude."

This article was originally published on July 03, 2018.

This segment aired on July 3, 2018.

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