The Adirondack Almanac offered a unique and local perspective on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with a capsule history of attempted protest marching in Plattsburgh, beginning with the Civil Rights Era.  City officials turned down requests for march permits.
    This recalls the controversies of an earlier time, when abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith and Susan B. Anthony were often more scorned than welcomed.
   But times change.  Here is a paragraph from the Almanac article by Lawrence P. Gooley.
A series of events during the 1960s proved that peaceful protest and the purity of King’s motives were strong enough to convert critics and naysayers. Plattsburgh offers an example of King’s effect over the course of a decade.
Until the mid-1990s, the city had two longstanding identities as a college town and a military town. The rigid thinking of the military and the free-thinking atmosphere of colleges were forced to coexist. But in 1960, students at Plattsburgh State and representatives of Plattsburgh Air Force Base disagreed on the right to protest.
  Read more,   http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2013/01/martin-luther-kings-plattsburgh-legacy.html