MLK Visited Charlottesville at Turning Point in Movement for Civil Rights

The Hook has the story. King came here in 1963 just before the Birmingham marches and before the March on Washington. It was a low point following Albany campaign. King, being black, couldn't eat in most restaurants in Charlottesville or sleep in most hotels. (He stayed at the motel on Emmett Street now called the Budget Inn.) After King spoke, local residents took nonviolent action aimed at integrating a restaurant. Charlottesvillians and cavaliers failed to fill Cabell Hall for King's speech. I guess that's understandable though, since he wasn't a dead guy with a Nobel prize and a national holiday, but rather an agitator who would be as disgusted with how we're behaving now as he was with how people behaved back then.