A prominent civil rights leader in Kentucky who became the state's first woman and African-American elected to the state's Senate has died. Georgia Davis Powers was 92.
Raoul Cunningham, Kentucky NAACP president and longtime friend, says Powers died at about 3:40 a.m. at her brother's house in Louisville.
Her career in the Kentucky Senate spanned from 1968 to 1989.
The Louisville Democrat was instrumental in organizing the 1964 Civil Rights March on Frankfort featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Jackie Robinson. Powers also gained national attention after she said in her autobiography she had a yearlong affair with Dr. King and was with him at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was killed.
In "I Shared the Dream," Powers said the affair started about three years after she first met King and ended when he was assassinated in 1968.