"Heed Their Rising Voices" is a 1960 newspaper advertisement published inThe New York Times. It was published on March 29, 1960 and paid for by the "Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South". The purpose of the advertisement was to attract attention and steer support towardsMartin Luther King Jr. A recent felony charge of perjury was leveled against King and could have resulted in a lengthy imprisonment.[1] The headline of the advertisement was drawn from a phrase used in theNew York Times editorial, "Amendment XV", published on March 19, 1960.[2][3]
The advertisement contained numerous factual inaccuracies, such as claiming that King had been arrested 7 times, when it was actually 4, and police "ringing" theAlabama State College Campus, when they actually only deployed near it.[4] Because of these errors, Montgomery Public Safety commissioner L. B. Sullivan, who himself was not named in the article, sued the New York times for libel. After Sullivan won $500,000 indamages, the case was appealed to theSupreme Court, resulting in thelandmark caseNew York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).[5] In it, JusticeWilliam J. Brennan Jr. wrote the majority opinion for the unanimousWarren Court, holding that public officials, such as Sullivan, must prove that the defendant spoke with "actual malice– that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard” of the truth.[2] The case against theTimes was then dropped.[6]
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