WILLIAMSTON — The state of North Carolina is commemorating the site of mass civil rights protests in the summer of 1963 with a highway marker at the church where it all started.

State officials are dedicating the marker at Green Memorial Church in Williamston on Sunday.

For 32 days that summer, the church served as the headquarters of a nonviolent civil rights protest organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Tensions in the Martin County town had been simmering since the 1957 acquittal of a white man accused of murdering a black man.

More than 400 people took part, mostly children and teenagers who regularly marched from the church to the courthouse. The Ku Klux Klan organized counter protests, and local officials ultimately desegregated some town facilities.