King Wins Nobel at 35: Civil Rights Leader Honored
Martin Luther King Jr. learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize on October 14, 1964, while recovering from exhaustion in an Atlanta hospital. At 35, he was the youngest laureate in the prize's history. The Nobel Committee cited his consistent advocacy of nonviolence in the struggle for racial equality. King donated the entire $54,123 prize money to the civil rights movement. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had been surveilling King for years, called him 'the most dangerous Negro in America' and intensified efforts to discredit him. The prize gave King enormous international moral authority at a critical moment: the Civil Rights Act had been signed in July, and the Selma to Montgomery marches that would lead to the Voting Rights Act were just months away.
October 14, 1964
62 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on October 14
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