Birmingham campaign

High school students are hit by a high-pressure water jet from a firehose during a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Images like this one, printed in Life magazine, inspired international support for the demonstrators. Image credit: Charles Moore, Black Star

The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to promote civil rights for all Americans, including black Americans. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, and aimed at ending the city's segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies, the campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police into filling the city's jails to overflowing, Martin Luther King, Jr. and black citizens of Birmingham employed nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when he said, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation".

Protests in Birmingham began with a selective buying campaign to pressure business leaders to open retail sales jobs and other employment to people of all races. When business leaders continued to resist the boycott, King and the SCLC began what they termed "Project C", a series of sit-ins and marches. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers willing to risk arrest, it recruited children for what became known as the "Children's Crusade". High school, college, and elementary students were trained to participate, and hundreds were arrested. During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and dogs to control protesters, including children. Media coverage of these events brought intense scrutiny on segregation in the South.

Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. Scenes of the ensuing mayhem caused an international outcry. It led to Federal intervention by the Kennedy administration. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation was enhanced, Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks.

The Birmingham campaign was a model of direct action protest, as it effectively shut down the city. In attracting media attention to the adverse treatment of black Americans, it brought national force to bear on the issue of segregation. Although desegregation occurred slowly in Birmingham, the campaign was a major factor in the national push towards the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law prohibited racial discrimination in hiring practices and provision of public services in the United States.

Background

A city of segregation

In 1963, Birmingham was one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States. Given discriminatory registration practices, in 1960 only 10 percent of the city's black population was registered to vote. Their lack of political power extended to lack of economic power. The average income for blacks in the city was less than half that of whites. Significantly lower pay scales for black workers at the local steel mills were common. White industrialists benefited by such segregation. Birmingham had no black police officers, firefighters, sales clerks in department stores, bus drivers, bank tellers or store cashiers. Black secretaries could not work for white professionals. Jobs available to blacks were limited to manual labor in Birmingham's steel mills or work in black neighborhoods. When layoffs were necessary, black employees were the first to go. The unemployment rate for blacks was two and a half times higher than for whites.

Birmingham's economy was stagnating as the city tried to shift from blue collar to white collar jobs. Time magazine said in 1958 that the only thing white workers had to gain from desegregation was more competition from black workers. The city was notorious for racial violence and numerous, independent Ku Klux Klan groups were active. Fifty racially motivated bombings between 1945 and 1962 had earned the city the nickname "Bombingham". All the bombings were unsolved. A neighborhood shared by white and black families experienced so many attacks that it was called "Dynamite Hill". Black churches in which civil rights were discussed became specific targets for attack.

Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights

Birmingham's black population began to organize to effect change. Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) in 1956 to challenge the City of Birmingham's segregation policies through lawsuits and protests. When the courts overturned the segregation of the city's parks, the city responded by closing them. Shuttlesworth's home was repeatedly bombed, as was Bethel Baptist Church, where he was pastor. After Shuttlesworth was arrested and jailed for violating the city's segregation rules in 1962, he sent a petition to Mayor Art Hanes' office asking that public facilities be desegregated. Hanes responded with a letter informing Shuttlesworth that his petition had been thrown in the garbage. Looking for outside help, Shuttlesworth invited Martin Luther King and the SCLC to Birmingham, saying, "If you come to Birmingham, you will not only gain prestige, but really shake the country. If you win in Birmingham, as Birmingham goes, so goes the nation."

Campaign goals

During the summer of 1962, Martin Luther King had led a movement in Albany, Georgia, to try to change that city's policies of segregation. The campaign was described as a "morass" instead of a success. King's reputation had been adversely affected by the campaign in Albany, and he was eager to improve it. The Albany Movement provided an important lesson for the SCLC as it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. In Albany, King and the SCLC concentrated on the desegregation of the city as a whole.

In Birmingham, their campaign focused on several defined goals for the downtown shopping and government district. These goals included the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown stores (blacks could shop there but not try on clothes and restrooms were segregated), non-racial hiring practices in shops and city employment, reopening of public parks, and the creation of a bi-racial committee to oversee the desegregation of Birmingham's public schools.

Commissioner of Public Safety

Main article: Bull Connor

Through its forceful resistance to the campaign, the city government in fact was a significant factor in the campaign's success. The city had a particular structure that gave outsize influence to its Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor. He was adamantly opposed to integration and had influence with much of the city's economic power structure. He was described as an "arch-segregationist" by Time magazine, said, "We ain't gonna segregate [sic] no niggers and whites together in this town." In 1958 police arrested ministers organizing a bus boycott. Connor responded to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) allegations of police misconduct by saying, "I haven't got any damn apology to the FBI or anybody else", and predicted, "If the North keeps trying to cram this thing (desegregation) down our throats, there's going to be bloodshed." In 1961, Connor delayed sending police to intervene when Freedom Riders were beaten by local mobs. The police harassed religious leaders and protest organizers by ticketing cars parked at mass meetings and entering the meetings in plainclothes to take notes. In addition, the Birmingham Fire Department interrupted such meetings to search for "phantom fire hazards". Connor's antagonism towards the Civil Rights Movement galvanized support for black Americans. U.S. President John F. Kennedy later said of him, "The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln."

Turmoil in the mayor's office weakened the Birmingham city government in its opposition to the campaign. Connor, who had run for several elected offices, had lost all but the race for Public Safety Commissioner, but for years had huge power in that role and effectively ran the city.

Because they believed Connor's extreme conservatism slowed progress for the city as a whole, a group of white political moderates worked to defeat Connor. The Citizens for Progress was backed by the Chamber of Commerce and other white professionals in the city, and their tactics were successful. In November 1962, Connor lost the race for mayor to Albert Boutwell, a less combative segregationist. Connor and his colleagues on the City Commission refused to accept the new mayor's authority. They claimed on a technicality that their terms would not expire until 1965 instead of in the spring of 1963. For a brief time, Birmingham had two city governments attempting to conduct business.

Focus on Birmingham

Selective Buying Campaign

Modeled on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, protest actions in Birmingham began in 1962, when students from local colleges arranged for a year of staggered boycotts. They caused downtown business to decline by as much as 40 percent. The boycotts were declared 80 to 95 percent effective. In response, the City of Birmingham punished the black community by withdrawing $45,000 from a surplus-food program used primarily by low-income blacks. The result was a black community more motivated to resist.

Few blacks were registered to vote in Albany, Georgia, in 1962. Based on experience there, movement organizers decided that economic pressure on Birmingham businesses would be more effective than pressure on politicians. In the spring of 1963 before Easter, the Birmingham boycott intensified during the second-busiest shopping season of the year. Pastors urged their congregations to avoid shopping in Birmingham stores in the downtown district. For six weeks supporters of the boycott patrolled the downtown area to make sure blacks were not patronizing stores that promoted or tolerated segregation. If black shoppers were found in these stores, organizers confronted them and shamed them into participating in the boycott. Shuttlesworth recalled a woman whose $15 hat was destroyed by boycott enforcers. Campaign participant Joe Dickson recalled, "We had to go under strict surveillance. We had to tell people, say look: if you go downtown and buy something, you're going to have to answer to us." After several business owners in Birmingham took down "white only" and "colored only" signs, Commissioner Connor told business owners that if they did not obey the segregation ordinances, they would lose their business licenses.

Project C

Marin Luther King's presence in Birmingham was not welcomed by all in the black community. A black attorney was quoted in Time magazine as saying, "The new administration should have been given a chance to confer with the various groups interested in change." Black hotel owner A. G. Gaston stated, "I regret the absence of continued communication between white and Negro leadership in our city." A white Jesuit priest assisting in desegregation negotiations attested, "These demonstrations are poorly timed and misdirected."

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The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, headquarters and rendezvous point for the campaign

Protest organizers knew they would meet with violence from the Birmingham Police Department but chose a confrontational approach to get the attention of the Federal government. Wyatt Tee Walker, one of the SCLC founders, used Connor's tendency to act with violence to support the movement. "My theory was that if we mounted a strong nonviolent movement, the opposition would surely do something to attract the media, and in turn induce national sympathy and attention to the everyday segregated circumstance of a person living in the Deep South," Walker said. He headed the planning of what he called "Project C", which stood for "confrontation". Organizers believed their phones were tapped. To prevent their plans from being leaked and perhaps influencing the mayoral election, they used code words for demonstrations.

The plan called for direct nonviolent action to attract media attention to "the biggest and baddest city of the South." In preparation for the protests, Walker timed the walking distance from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, headquarters for the campaign, to the downtown area; surveyed the segregated lunch counters of department stores; and listed Federal buildings as secondary targets should police block the protesters' entrance into primary targets such as stores, libraries, and all-white churches.

Methods

The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins at libraries and lunch counters, kneel-ins by black visitors at white churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a voter-registration drive. Most businesses simply responded by refusing to serve demonstrators. Some white spectators at a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter spat upon the participants. A few hundred protesters, including jazz musician Al Hibbler, were arrested, although Hibbler was immediately released by Connor. Not enough people were arrested to affect the functioning of the city. The editor of The Birmingham World, the city's black newspaper, called the direct actions by the demonstrators "wasteful and worthless". Editors urged black citizens to use the courts to change the city's racist policies. Most white residents of Birmingham expressed shock at the demonstrations. White religious leaders denounced King and the other organizers, saying that "a cause should be pressed in the courts and the negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets." Some white Birmingham residents, however, were supportive as the boycott continued. When one black woman entered Loveman's department store to buy her children Easter shoes, a white saleswoman said to her, "Negro, ain't you ashamed of yourself, your people out there on the street getting put in jail and you in here spending money and I'm not going to sell you any, you'll have to go some other place." King promised a protest every day until "peaceful equality had been assured" and expressed doubt that the new mayor would ever voluntarily desegregate the city.

City reaction

On April 10, 1963 Bull Connor obtained an injunction barring such protests and subsequently raised bail bond for arrested protesters from $300 to $1,200. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth called the injunction a "flagrant denial of our constitutional rights". The decision to ignore any such order had already been made. King and the SCLC had obeyed court injunctions in their Albany protests. They decided that obeying the injunctions contributed to the earlier campaign's lack of success.

In a press release they explained, "We are now confronted with recalcitrant forces in the Deep South that will use the courts to perpetuate the unjust and illegal systems of racial separation." Incoming mayor Albert Boutwell called the King and the SCLC organizers "strangers" whose only purpose in Birmingham was "to stir inter-racial discord". Connor promised, "You can rest assured that I will fill the jail full of any persons violating the law as long as I'm at City Hall."

The movement organizers found themselves out of money after the amount of bail required was raised. Since King was the major fund raiser, his associates urged him to travel the country to raise bail money for those arrested. He had promised to lead the marchers to jail in solidarity but hesitated as the planned date arrived. Some SCLC members grew frustrated with his indecisiveness. "I have never seen Martin so troubled", one of King's friends later said. After King reflected alone in his hotel room, he and the campaign leaders decided to defy the injunction and prepared for mass arrests of campaign supporters.

"The eyes of the world are on Birmingham tonight", said Ralph Abernathy at a mass meeting of Birmingham's black citizens at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Mass meetings were used to build morale and to recruit volunteers to go to jail. "Bobby Kennedy is looking here at Birmingham, the United States Congress is looking at Birmingham. The Department of Justice is looking at Birmingham. Are you ready, are you ready to make the challenge? I am ready to go to jail, are you?" Along with Abernathy, King was among 50 Birmingham residents ranging in age from 15 to 81 years who were arrested on Good Friday, April 12, 1963. It was King's 13th arrest.

Martin Luther King jailed

Main article: Letter from Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King, Jr., a year later in 1964, promoting the book Why We Can't Wait, based on his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

King was held in the Birmingham Jail and was refused a consultation with an attorney from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) without guards present. When historian Jonathan Bass wrote of the incident in 2001, he noted news of King's incarceration was spread quickly by Wyatt Tee Walker, as planned. King's supporters sent telegrams about his arrest to the White House. King could have been released on bail at any time. Although the jail administrators wanted King released as soon as bail could be raised and paid, campaign organizers offered no bail. They wanted "to focus the attention of the media and national public opinion on the Birmingham situation."

Supporters pressured the Kennedy administration to intervene to obtain his release. Twenty-four hours after his arrest, King was allowed to see local attorneys from the SCLC. When Coretta Scott King did not hear from her husband, she called Walker. He suggested that she call President Kennedy directly. Mrs. King, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child, received a call from President Kennedy the Monday after the arrest. The president told her she could expect a call from her husband soon. When Martin Luther King called his wife, their conversation was brief and guarded. He correctly assumed that his phones were tapped. Several days later, Jacqueline Kennedy called Coretta Scott King to express her concern for King while he was incarcerated.

While in jail on April 16, King released his "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written on the margins of a newspaper, scraps of paper given to him by a janitor, and later on a legal pad given to him by his SCLC attorneys. The letter responded to eight politically moderate white clergymen who were protesting King's presence in Birmingham. They had said he was agitating local residents and that he had not given the incoming mayor a chance to make any changes. Historian Bass suggested that the letter was pre-planned, as was every move King and his associates made in Birmingham. The letter was a culmination of many of King's ideas touched on in his earlier writings. The Rev. King's arrest attracted national attention, including that of corporate officers of retail chains with stores in downtown Birmingham. After King's arrest, the chains' profits began to erode. National business owners pressed the Kennedy administration to intervene. King was released on April 20, 1963.

Conflict escalation

Recruiting students

Despite the publicity surrounding King's arrest, the campaign was faltering because it was running out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. In addition, although Connor had used police dogs to assist in the arrest of demonstrators, this did not attract the media attention that organizers had hoped for. To re-energize the campaign, SCLC organizers devised a controversial alternative plan they named "D" Day that was later called the "Children's Crusade" by Newsweek magazine. "D" Day called for students from Birmingham elementary schools and high schools as well as nearby Miles College to take part in the demonstrations. James Bevel, a religious leader and veteran of earlier nonviolent protests, organized the students, but King hesitated to approve the use of children. Bevel believed that children would be appropriate for the demonstrations because jail time for them would not hurt families economically as much as the loss of a working parent. He also saw that adults in the black community were divided about how much support to give the protests. Bevel and the organizers knew that students were a more cohesive group; they had been together as classmates since kindergarten. He was successful in recruiting girls who were school leaders or prom queens and boys who were athletes. Bevel found girls more receptive to his ideas than boys because girls had less experience as victims of white violence. However when the girls joined, the boys were close behind. WENN, Birmingham's black radio station, supported the new plan by encouraging students to arrive at the demonstration meeting place with a toothbrush to be used in jail. Flyers were distributed in black schools and neighborhoods that said, "Fight for freedom first then go to school" and "It's up to you to free our teachers, our parents, yourself, and our country". The SCLC held workshops to help students overcome their fear of dogs and jails and showed them films of the Nashville sit-ins Bevel and others had helped organize in 1960 to end segregation at public lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee.

Children's Crusade

Main article: Children's Crusade (civil rights)

On May 2, more than a thousand students skipped school and gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The principal of Parker High School attempted to lock the gates to keep students in, but they scrambled over the walls to get to the church. Given the directive to reach stores and buildings downtown to integrate them, demonstrators were to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church and other churches in the area, leave in smaller groups and continue on their courses until arrested. Marching in disciplined ranks, some of them using walkie-talkies, they were sent at timed intervals from various churches to the downtown business area. More than 600 were arrested, and the youngest of these was reported to be eight years old. Children left the churches singing hymns and "freedom songs" such as "We Shall Overcome", clapping and laughing while being arrested and awaiting transport to jail. The mood was compared to that of a school picnic. Although Bevel informed Connor that the march was to take place, Connor and the police were dumbfounded by the numbers and behavior of the children, but they assembled paddy wagons and school buses to take the children to jail. When no squad cars were left to block the city streets, Connor, whose authority extended to the fire department, used fire trucks. The day's arrests brought the total number of jailed protesters to 1,200 in the 900-capacity Birmingham jail.

Incoming mayor Albert Boutwell and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy condemned the decision to use children in the protests. Kennedy was reported in The New York Times as saying, "an injured, maimed, or dead child is a price that none of us can afford to pay," although adding, "I believe that everyone understands their just grievances must be resolved." Malcolm X criticized the decision, saying, "Real men don't put their children on the firing line." King, who had been silent and then out of town while Bevel was organizing children, saw the success of the day and declared at a mass meeting that evening, "I have been inspired and moved by today. I have never seen anything like it." Wyatt Tee Walker was initially against the use of children in demonstrations but responded to the criticism saying, "Negro children will get a better education in five days in jail than in five months in a segregated school." The "D" Day campaign received front page coverage in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Fire hoses and police dogs

When Connor realized that the Birmingham jail could hold no more people, he changed the tactics of the police on May 3 to keep protesters out of the downtown business area. Another thousand students gathered at the church, leaving to walk across Kelly Ingram Park to go downtown chanting, "We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom ... freedom ... freedom." As the demonstrators left the church, they were warned to stop and turn back, "or you'll get wet". When they continued, Connor ordered the city's fire hoses, set at a level that would peel bark off a tree or separate bricks from mortar, to be turned on the children. Boys' shirts were ripped off, and young women were pushed over the tops of cars by the force of the water. When the students crouched or fell, the blasts of water rolled them down the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks. Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, "Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want 'em to see the dogs work."

A.G. Gaston, who was appalled at the idea of using children, was on the phone with white attorney David Vann trying to negotiate a resolution to the crisis when Gaston looked out the window and saw the children being hit with high-pressure water. "Lawyer Vann, I can't talk to you now or ever. My people are out there fighting for their lives and my freedom. I have to go help them," Gaston said, and hung up the phone. Black parents and adults who were not participating cheered the marching students and, when the hoses were turned on, began to throw rocks and bottles at the police. To disperse them, Connor ordered German shepherd police dogs, also pelted with bricks and stones, to attack. James Bevel wove in and out of the crowds warning them, "If any cops get hurt, we're going to lose this fight." At 3 p.m., however, the protest was over, and during a kind of truce, protesters went home, and police removed the barricades and re-opened the streets to traffic. That evening King told worried parents in a crowd of a thousand, "Don't worry about your children who are in jail. The eyes of the world are on Birmingham. We're going on in spite of dogs and fire hoses. We've gone too far to turn back."

Images of the day

This image of Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs was published in The New York Times on May 4, 1963. Image credit: Bill Hudson, Associated Press

A battle-hardened Huntley-Brinkley reporter on the scene later said that no military action he had witnessed had ever frightened or disturbed him as much as what he saw in Birmingham. Two out-of-town photographers who were in Birmingham that day were Charles Moore, who had previously worked for the Montgomery Advertiser and who now worked for Life magazine, and Bill Hudson, with the Associated Press. Moore was a Marine combat photographer who was "jarred" and "sickened" by the use of children and what the Birmingham police and fire departments did to them. Moore was hit in the ankle by a brick meant for the police. He took several photos that were printed in Life, but his first photo of the day showed three teenagers being hit by a water jet from a high-pressure firehose. It was titled "They Fight a Fire That Won't Go Out". A truncated version of the photo's title became the title of Fred Shuttlesworth's biography. The Life photo became an "era-defining picture" and was compared to a photo of Marines raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima. Moore suspected that the film he shot "was likely to obliterate in the national psyche any notion of a 'good southerner.' " Hudson remarked later that his only priorities that day were "making pictures and staying alive" and "not getting bit by a dog". Right in front of him stepped Parker High School senior Walter Gadsden as a police officer grabbed the young man's sweater and a police dog charged him. Gadsden, attending the demonstration as an observer, was related to the editor of Birmingham's black newspaper, The Birmingham World, and that editor strongly disapproved of King's leadership in the campaign. Gadsden was arrested for "parading without a permit", and Connor, who witnessed his arrest, remarked to the officer, "Why didn't you bring a meaner dog; this one is not the vicious one." Hudson's photo of Gadsden ran across three columns above the fold on the front page of The New York Times on May 4, 1963.

Television cameras broadcast to the nation the scenes of water from fire hoses knocking down schoolchildren and dogs attacking individual demonstrators with no means of protecting themselves. Photos were given the credit for shifting international support to the protesters and making Bull Connor "the villain of the era". President Kennedy told a group of people at the White House that The New York Times photo made him "sick". Kennedy called the scenes "shameful" and said that they were "so much more eloquently reported by the news camera than by any number of explanatory words."

The images also had a profound effect in Birmingham. Despite decades of disagreements, when the photos were released, "the black community was instantaneously consolidated behind King", according to David Vann, who would later served as mayor of Birmingham. New York Senator Jacob K. Javits, horrified at what the Birmingham police were doing to protect segregation, declared, "the country won't tolerate it", and pressed Congress to pass a civil rights bill. Similar reactions were reported by Kentucky Senator Sherman Cooper, and Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, who compared Birmingham to South Africa under apartheid. A New York Times editorial called the behavior of the Birmingham police "a national disgrace". The Washington Post editorialized, "The spectacle in Birmingham ... must excite the sympathy of the rest of the country for the decent, just, and reasonable citizens of the community, who have so recently demonstrated at the polls their lack of support for the very policies that have produced the Birmingham riots. The authorities who tried, by these brutal means, to stop the freedom marchers do not speak or act in the name of the enlightened people of the city." President Kennedy sent Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall to Birmingham to help negotiate a truce, but Marshall faced a stalemate when merchants and protest organizers refused to budge.

Standoff

Demonstrators abandoned nonviolence on May 5. Connor ordered the doors to the churches blocked to prevent students from leaving. Black spectators taunted police, and SCLC leaders pled with them to be peaceful or go home. James Bevel borrowed a bullhorn from the police and shouted, "Everybody get off this corner. If you're not going to demonstrate in a nonviolent way, then leave!" Commissioner Connor was overheard saying, "If you'd ask half of them what freedom means, they couldn't tell you."

By May 6, the jails were so full that Connor transformed the stockade at the state fairgrounds into a makeshift jail to hold the protesters. Black protesters arrived at white churches to integrate services. They were accepted in Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and Presbyterian churches but turned away at others, where they knelt and prayed until they were arrested. Joan Baez arrived to perform at Miles College for free and stayed at the black-owned and integrated Gaston Motel. Comedian Dick Gregory and Barbara Deming, a writer for The Nation, were both arrested. Young reporter Dan Rather was present and reported for CBS News. The car of Fannie Flagg, a local television personality and recent Miss Alabama finalist, was surrounded by teenagers who recognized her. Flagg worked at Channel 6 on the morning show, and after asking her producers why the show was not covering the demonstrations, she received orders never to mention them on air. She rolled down the window and shouted to the children, "I'm with you all the way!" Birmingham's fire department refused orders from Connor to turn the hoses on demonstrators again and waded through the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church to clean up water from earlier fire-hose flooding. White business leaders met with protest organizers to try arrange an economic solution but said they had no control over politics. Protest organizers disagreed, saying that business leaders were positioned to pressure political leaders.

City collapse

The situation reached a crisis on May 7, 1963. Breakfast in the jail took four hours to distribute to all the prisoners. Seventy members of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce pleaded with the protest organizers to stop the actions. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) asked for sympathizers to picket in unity in 100 American cities. Nineteen rabbis from New York flew to Birmingham, equating silence about segregation to the atrocities of the Holocaust, but local rabbis did not agree and urged them to go home. The editor of The Birmingham News wired President Kennedy, pleading with him to put an end to the protests. Fire hoses were used once again, injuring police and Fred Shuttlesworth, as well as other demonstrators. Commissioner Connor expressed regret at not seeing Shuttlesworth get hit by the high-pressure water and said he "wished they'd carried him away in a hearse." Another 1,000 people were arrested, bringing the total to 2,500.

News of the mass arrests of children by now had reached Western Europe. The Soviet Union began a "massive propaganda exploitation" of the events in Birmingham, using it for up to 25 percent of its news broadcast, and much of it was sent to Africa, where Soviet and U.S. interests clashed. Soviet news commentary accused the Kennedy administration of neglect and "inactivity". Alabama Governor George Wallace sent state troopers to assist Connor, and Robert Kennedy prepared to activate the Alabama National Guard and notified the Second Infantry Division from Fort Benning, Georgia that it might be deployed to Birmingham.

No business of any kind was being conducted downtown. The civil infrastructure had completely collapsed. Organizers planned to flood the downtown area businesses with black people, and smaller groups of decoys were planted to distract police attention from the 16th Street Baptist Church. False fire alarms were pulled to occupy the fire department's hoses. One group of children approached a police officer and announced, "We want to go to jail!" When the officer pointed the way, the students ran across Kelly Ingram Park shouting, "We're going to jail!" Six hundred picketers reached downtown Birmingham, and in other stores large groups of protesters sat on the floor and sang freedom songs. Streets, sidewalks, stores, and buildings were overwhelmed with more than 3,000 protesters, and the sheriff and chief of police admitted that they didn't think they could handle the situation for more than a few hours.

Resolution

Wreckage at the Gaston Motel following the bomb explosion on May 11 1963

On May 8 at 4 a.m., white business leaders agreed to most of the protesters' demands. Political leaders held fast, however, and the rift between the businessmen and the politicians became clear when business leaders admitted they could not guarantee the protesters' release from jail. On May 10, Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King told reporters that they had an agreement from the City of Birmingham to desegregate lunch counters, restrooms, drinking fountains and fitting rooms within 90 days, and to hire blacks in stores as salesmen and clerks. Those in jail would be released on bond or their own recognizance. Urged by Kennedy, the United Auto Workers, National Maritime Union, United Steelworkers Union, and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) raised $237,000 in bail money to free the demonstrators. Commissioner Connor and the outgoing mayor condemned the decision.

On May 11, a bomb ripped through the Gaston Motel where King had been staying, and another damaged the house of Reverend A.D. King, Martin Luther King's brother. When police came to inspect the motel, they were met with rocks and bottles from neighborhood blacks. By May 13, three thousand federal troops had been deployed to Birmingham to restore order, even though Alabama Governor George Wallace told President Kennedy that state and local forces were sufficient. Martin Luther King returned to Birmingham to stress nonviolence. Outgoing mayor Art Hanes left office after the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that Albert Boutwell could take office on May 21. Upon picking up his last paycheck, Bull Connor remarked tearfully, "This is the worst day of my life." In June 1963, the Jim Crow signs indicating segregated public places in Birmingham were taken down.

After the campaign

Desegregation in Birmingham happened slowly after the demonstrations. King and the SCLC were criticized for ending the campaign with promises that were too vague and "settling for a lot less than even moderate demands". In fact, Sydney Smyer, the head of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, re-interpreted the terms of the agreement. Shuttlesworth and King had announced that desegregation would take place 90 days from May 15, but Smyer said that a single black clerk hired 90 days from when the new city government took office would be sufficient. By July, most of the city's segregation ordinances had been overturned, and some of the lunch counters in department stores were complying with the new rules. City parks and golf courses were opened again to black and white citizens, and a biracial committee to discuss further changes was appointed by Mayor Boutwell. However, the hiring of clerks, police officers, and firefighters still had not taken place, and black attorneys were rejected by the Birmingham Bar Association.

The reputation of Martin Luther King soared after the protests in Birmingham, and he was lauded in many cities as a hero. The SCLC was much in demand to change the set ways of many Southern cities. In the summer of 1963, King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which he delivered his most famous speech, "I Have a Dream". King became Time's Man of the Year for 1963 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The Birmingham campaign, as well as George Wallace's refusal to admit black students to the University of Alabama, induced President Kennedy to address the severe inequalities between black and white citizens in the South: "The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them." Despite the apparent lack of immediate local success after the Birmingham campaign, Fred Shuttlesworth and Wyatt Tee Walker pointed to its influence on national affairs as its true impact. President Kennedy drew up the Civil Rights Act bill that, after being filibustered for 75 days by "diehard southerners in ... Congress", was eventually passed into law and signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The Civil Rights Act, which applied to the whole nation, prohibited racial discrimination in employment and in access to public places. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, however, disagreed that the Birmingham campaign was the primary force behind the Civil Rights Act. Wilkins gave credit to other movements, such as the Freedom Rides, the integration of the University of Mississippi, and campaigns to end public school desegregation.

Birmingham residents view the bomb-damaged home of NAACP attorney Arthur Shores on September 5, 1963.

Birmingham's public schools were integrated in September 1963, after Governor Wallace sent National Guard troops to keep black students out and President Kennedy reversed Wallace by ordering the troops to stand down. Violence continued to plague the city, however. Someone threw a tear gas canister into Loveman's department store when it complied with the desegregation agreement, sending 20 people to the hospital. Four months after the Birmingham campaign settlement was made, an NAACP attorney's house was bombed, injuring his wife. On September 15, 1963, Birmingham again earned international attention when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls.

The Birmingham campaign inspired the Civil Rights Movement in other parts of the South. Medgar Evers of the NAACP in Jackson, Mississippi, demanded a biracial committee to address concerns there just two days after King and Shuttlesworth announced the settlement in Birmingham. Evers was fatally shot outside his home on June 13, 1963, after using the same tactics that worked in Birmingham to pressure Jackson's city government. Shuttlesworth assisted King and the SCLC in 1965 to lead marches in Selma, Alabama, related to a voter registration drive.

Campaign impact

Historian Glenn Eskew wrote that the campaign "led to an awakening to the evils of segregation and a need for reforms in the region." However, leadership was given to the black middle class in Birmingham and the SCLC, and the black underclass was left out. Eskew wrote that the riots that occurred after the bombing of the Gaston Motel foreshadowed rioting in larger cities later in the 1960s. ACMHR vice president Abraham Woods claimed that the rioting he saw in Birmingham set a precedent for "Burn, baby, burn", a cry used in later race riots in Watts, Detroit, and other American cities in the 1960s. A study of the Watts riots concluded, "The 'rules of the game' in race relations were permanently changed in Birmingham."

Wyatt Tee Walker wrote that the Birmingham campaign is "legend" and has become the Civil Rights Movement's most important chapter. It was "the chief watershed of the nonviolent movement in the United States. It marked the maturation of the SCLC as a national force in the civil rights arena of the land that had been dominated by the older and stodgier NAACP". Walker called the Birmingham campaign and the Selma marches "Siamese twins" joining together to "kill segregation ... and bury the body." Jonathan Bass declared that "King had won a tremendous public relations victory in Birmingham" but also stated pointedly that "it was the citizens of the Magic City, both black and white, and not Martin Luther King and the SCLC, that brought about the real transformation of the city."

Bibliography

• Bass, S. Jonathan (2001). Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'. Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807126551
• Branch, Taylor (1988). Parting The Waters; America In The King Years 1954-63. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0671460978
• Cotman, John (1989). Birmingham, JFK, and the Civil Rights Act of 1963: implications for elite theory. Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 0820408069
• Eskew, Glenn (1997). But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807861324
• Fairclough, Adam (1987). To redeem the soul of America: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0820308986
• Franklin, Jimmie (1989). Back to Birmingham: Richard Arrington, Jr. and his times. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0817304355
• Garrow, David (1986). Bearing the cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. W. Morrow. ISBN 0688047947
• Garrow, David, ed. (1989). Birmingham, Alabama, 1956-1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights. Carlson Publishing. ISBN 092601904X
• Hampton, Henry, Fayer, S. (1990). Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. Bantam Books. ISBN 0553057340
• Manis, Andrew (1999). A fire you can't put out: the civil rights life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0585354405
• McWhorter, Diane (2001). Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743217721
• Nunnelley, William (1991). Bull Connor. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 058532316X
• White, Marjorie, Manis, Andrew, eds. (2000) Birmingham Revolutionaries: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Mercer University Press. ISBN 0865547092
• Wilson, Bobby (2000). Race and Place in Birmingham: The Civil Rights and Neighborhood Movements. Rowan & Littlefield. ISBN 0847694828

Further reading

• King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1963). Why We Can't Wait. Signet Classics. ISBN 978-0451527530.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Raines, Howell (1977). My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered. New York: Putnam Publishing Group. ISBN 0399118535.
• White, Marjorie Longenecker (1998). A Walk to Freedom: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Birmingham, Alabama: Birmingham Historical Society. ISBN 0943994241.