On July 27, 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Albany, Georgia, during the Albany Movement, a civil rights campaign aimed at desegregating the entire city. The movement, which began in late 1961, was one of the first major attempts to challenge segregation on a broad scale in the Deep South.

Dr. King was arrested for leading a protest and was sentenced to 45 days in jail or a fine. Initially, he chose jail to draw attention to racial injustice. However, local authorities quietly paid his bail, preventing the movement from gaining further momentum through his imprisonment.

While the Albany Movement did not achieve all of its immediate goals, it provided valuable lessons for future civil rights campaigns, particularly in Birmingham (1963) and Selma (1965), where more focused strategies led to significant victories.