1. In 1963, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for disobeying a state court injunction against demonstrations.

2. On August 20, 1931, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in the case of Guinn v. United States that Alabama's exclusion of African Americans from primary elections was unconstitutional.

3. Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant won his first game as head coach of the Crimson Tide on August 20, 1958, defeating LSU 13-3.

4. On this date in 1967, Birmingham Fire Chief Ray Downey made history by becoming the first African American to hold the position of fire chief in a major American city.

5. On August 20, 1986, NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, a Decatur, Alabama native, became the first African American woman to be accepted into the astronaut training program. Jemison would go on to become the first African American woman to travel in space in 1992.