1964 | A Libel Suit Yields a Vigorous Defense of Free Speech

It may surprise some readers that Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times involves an editorial, not a news article.

But libel cases can arise in surprising places. As a matter of fact, the most consequential libel case in contemporary American history, The New York Times Company v. L. B. Sullivan, was not fought over a news article or an editorial or anything else prepared by our staff.

No. The center of the storm was an advertisement — “Heed Their Rising Voices” — that was published on Page 25 of The Times on March 29, 1960. It was placed by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South, whose leadership included Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph.

Thousands of black students demonstrating nonviolently in the South for their basic human rights were “being met by an unprecedented wave of terror,” the advertisement declared. It made serious charges against law-enforcement authorities generally and called out police actions in Montgomery, Ala., among other places. A number of what appeared to be factual assertions in the ad turned out to be false.

L. B. Sullivan, an elected commissioner in Montgomery who supervised the police department, sued The Times for defamation, even though he was not named in the advertisement. He sought $500,000 in damages, an amount equivalent to about $4 million today.