The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the American Baptist minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) "for his non-violent struggle for civil rights for the Afro-American population."The Nobel Peace Prize 1064 nobelprize.org He is the twelfth American recipient of the prestigious Peace Prize.
Laureate
An adherent of Gandhi's principle of nonviolence, Rev. King began his efforts to persuade the U.S. Government to declare uncivil all the policies of racial discrimination in the southern states. His nonviolent struggle for civil rights and equality encountered violence and threats from racists and white supremacists. In 1963, more than 250,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where he gave his influential speech "I Have a Dream" in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. The following year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law prohibiting all racial discrimination. Finding resistance from white officials, Rev. King lead another peaceful march in 1965 to totally end racial segregation and recognize African-Americans constitutional right to vote. In April 1968, he was assassinated for his civil rights advocacy, which was later continued by his wife, Coretta Scott King, and other surviving pioneers of the movement.Martin Luther King Jr. – Facts nobelprize.org
Deliberations Nominations Reverend King had not been nominated before for the peace prize, making him one of the laureates who won on a rare occasion when they have been awarded the Nobel Prize the same year they were first nominated.Facts of the Nobel Peace Prize nobelprize.org He received only two nominations: from Colin W. Bell (1903–1988) of the American Friends Service Committee and a joint nomination by 8 members of the Swedish Parliament.Nomination archive – Martin Luther King Jr. nobelprize.org
In total, the Norwegian Nobel Committee received 92 nominations for 36 individuals and 8 organizations including Vinoba Bhave, Charles Braibant, Cyrus S. Eaton, Adolfo López Mateos, Trygve Lie, Clarence Streit, the UNICEF (awarded in 1965) and the Universal Esperanto Association. Thirteen individuals and two organizations were nominated for the first time such as Lyndon B. Johnson, Josef Hromádka, Norman Thomas, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Abraham Vereide, Paul-Henri Spaak and Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. Austrian philanthropist Hermann Gmeiner had the highest number of nominations with 25 different recommendations. No women were nominated that year.Nomination archive – Peace 1964 nobelprize.org Notable figures like Molly Childers, Anna J. Cooper, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Douglas MacArthur, Jeanne Mélin, Karl Polanyi and Georg Friedrich Nicolai died in 1964 without having been nominated for the peace prize while the American philanthropist Stephen Galatti died months before the announcement.