1. In 1963, the famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for his participation in protests in Birmingham, Alabama. His letter from Birmingham Jail, written while he was incarcerated, has become a seminal document in the civil rights movement.

2. In 1826, Confederate General William Dorsey Pender was born in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Pender was a key commander in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, and was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg.

3. On February 11, 1861, Alabama joined six other southern states in seceding from the United States to form the Confederate States of America. The secession was a response to growing tensions between northern and southern states over issues such as slavery and states' rights.

4. In 1937, the civil rights activist and educator Amelia Boynton Robinson led a protest against discriminatory voting practices in Selma, Alabama. The protest, known as "Bloody Sunday," was met with violent resistance from state and local authorities, but ultimately led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

5. On February 11, 1990, the first African American mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, Emory Folmar, was re-elected to a sixth term. Folmar, who served as mayor from 1977 to 1999, oversaw a period of significant development and expansion in the city.