Rocky Mount, North Carolina
Several notable Civil Rights events occurred in Rocky Mount. In 1946, African-American tobacco warehouse workers voted to organize in Rocky Mount as part of a broader nationwide movement known as Operation Dixie. It included voter registration to fight against disenfranchisement of blacks and other actions against segregation. On November 27, 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at Booker T. Washington High School. He used his refrain "I have a dream" a year before his more famous speech at the March on Washington. The city had a sanitation workers' strike in 1978 when government sanitation workers protested their black co-worker being wrongfully arrested. He was acquitted in court on the charges. In 2018 the city council apologized to him for the case.