Martin Luther King Jr. “We pleaded not guilty,” wrote Mr. Gaither, who died Dec. 23 at his home in Prospect, Pennsylvania, at age 86. “Hardly were the words out of our mouths when the judge ...

The local news no longer covered them. Then, in 1961, a 22-year-old organizer, Thomas Gaither, introduced a new tactic. In the next sit-in, at the lunch counter of a McCrory’s dime store in Rock ...