Personal check, 6 x 2.75, filled out and signed by Michael Milligan, payable to Martin Luther King, Jr. for $6, December 1960. Endorsed on the reverse in ballpoint, “Martin Luther King, Jr.” Below King’s endorsement signature is a deposit stamp, directing the funds to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The reverse also bears bank stamps dated to Atlanta, Georgia, on January 9, 1961. In very fine condition. Encapsulated in a PSA/DNA authentication holder.
A year before endorsing this check, on November 29, 1959, King announced his resignation as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. The departure followed his decision to concentrate on the civil rights movement and his relocation to Atlanta to direct the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he had become president of two years earlier. In an interview with Jet magazine, King stressed that moving from Montgomery was not a withdrawal from the movement. ‘Actually, I will be involved in it on a larger scale. I can't stop now. History has thrust something upon me from which I cannot turn away.’
Of further interest, this check dates shortly after King was released from the Georgia State Prison on October 27, 1960, following his arrest for participating in a sit-in at Rich's department store in Atlanta. With King’s situation looking dire, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy pulled enough strings to fashion the reverend’s release two days later. Richard Nixon’s stasis and Kennedy’s support, which included personally calling King’s wife, Coretta Scott, helped secure large segments of the African American vote and eventually swing the 1960 presidential election in Kennedy’s favor.
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