This photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr., taken by P. H. Polk, preserves a historic July 2, 1957, mass meeting called by the Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA) in the second month of the Tuskegee Boycott and Crusade for Citizenship. The main program included a message from K. L. Buford, a local minister and activist in Tuskegee, and speeches of support by Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph David Abernathy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Devotions are delivered by E.G. Braxter, reports and remarks by C.G. Gomillion, President of the TCA, and the Financial Appeal by S. T. Martin. TCA called a mass meeting in response to Senate Bill 219, a bill sponsored by Macon County state senator and White Citizens’ Council leader Sam Engelhardt. SB 219 dramatically redrew the Tuskegee city limits, in order to gerrymander all but 5 registered black voters out of the city. At the moment of crisis, these historic speeches urged the community to “get in it,” and called for endurance and unity in the struggles to overturn SB 219 and to end second-class citizenship in Macon County. The photograph has been scanned from a black and white negative preserved in the Tuskegee University Archives’ TCA photograph collection. An audio recording of the event can be found on the Tuskegee University Archives website or in the chapel collection on shared shelf. Uploaded by Jared McWilliams and Khandice Lofton.