The city has offered a pardon to those charged with misdemeanor crimes during the civil rights protests of the 1960's. One protestor-a pastor now-was 14 at the time and held for a "week in custody at the city fairgrounds charged with demonstrating without a permit". The state has had the offer ongoing for three years and "officials have not received a single pardon application from anyone arrested in the Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950's, the Birmingham demostrations of 1963 or the Selma voting rights marches of 1965". The "charges" are carried like a "badge of honor" by protestors who believe they did nothing to be pardoned for.
(Source: "Civil rights protestors pardoned of charges" by The AP. The Record on 8/12/09).
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