A photograph purportedly showing Martin Luther King, Jr. in the back seat of a police car along with a dog took another lap around the internet in January 2019, as social media users honored the civil rights leader on his birthday. This image was frequently attached to the claim that the pictured canine was a police dog put into the back seat of the vehicle in a futile attempt to "intimidate" King:
"In June 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was placed in the back seat of a police car in St. Augustine, Florida. A police dog was put into the car with him in an apparent attempt to intimidate King. Instead, the two promptly became friends. Today we honor this great man and the legacy of love and unity he left behind."
The above is a genuine photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr. sitting in the back seat of a police vehicle in the company of a police dog. However, we couldn't find any credible sources to support the claim that the dog had been put there in an attempt to intimidate King, or that King and the dog subsequently "became friends."
The photograph was taken on 12 June 1964 and captured King and the dog as they were being escorted back to jail from King's grand jury testimony in St. Augustine, Florida, following his arrest the day prior for staging a sit-in at a segregated restaurant.
Here are some other images of King and the dog in the police car, as well as the captions that accompanied them from the Associated Press, the State Library and Archives of Florida, and the Civil Rights Library of St. Augustine:
