Birmingham in the 1960's

In 1963, Birmingham became a focus for the Civil Rights Movement. Birmingham, as a city, had made its mark on the Civil Rights Movement for a number of years. Whether it was through the activities of Eugene "Bull: Connor or the church bombing which killed four school girls, many Americans should have known about Birmingham by 1963. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was relatively inactive in Birmingham until February of 1963 because the Birmingham City Council banned the organization from meeting in 1953; so any civil rights campaign could only be lead by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (King 36). Thus, Birmingham had a fast growing reputation as one of the South's most fiercely nonintegrated cities (Birmingham Civil Rights Institute).

"Birmingham is the most thoroughly segregated city in America," was the verdict of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the SCLC began the Birmingham demonstrations (King 53). These were a series of protests carried out by Birmingham blacks under the direction of the SCLC from April 3 to May 10, 1963. These acts of protest were against segregated public accommodations in downtown Birmingham and against employment discrimination. The city was the largest and richest in Alabama, but African Americans benefited little from its wealth. Most were denied the right to vote, were banned from using city recreational facilities, and were relegated to the area's most menial and lowest-paid jobs. Most humiliating of all, in downtown stores, they were forced to use "colored" water fountains, dressing rooms, restrooms, and lunch counters (Birmingham Civil Rights Institute). King responded to the voting issue by saying, "Of the 80,000 registered voters in Birmingham, prior to January 1963, only 10,000 were African Americans" (King 35). This was only one-eight of the voting population in the city.

But some blacks refused to accept racial discrimination and degradation. They established protest groups like the NAACP which challenged disfranchisement, police murders and brutality of African Americans, and other forms of racial oppression, largely through the courts. In 1956, however, a new protest group was formed which confronted racial bigotry in new ways. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) emerged as the brainchild of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a local African-American Baptist minister who believed that a more direct attack on racism was necessary. The boycotts and other anti-racism activities it sponsored had failed to win the support of a large number of blacks and had not posed a serious challenge to unfair laws and protest against the group (Birmingham Civil Rights Institute).

In March of 1963, King set up headquarters in a room at a motel in one of Birmingham's African American neighborhoods. He began recruiting volunteers for protest rallies and giving workshops centered on nonviolent techniques. Initially King had scheduled the protests to begin in time to disrupt the shopping for Easter season. He postponed his plans, however, to prevent them from affecting the local mayoral election, in which Eugene "Bull" Conner was a candidate (Birmingham Civil Rights Institute).

The campaign began on April 3 with lunch-counter sit-ins. On April 6, protestors marched on City Hall, and forty-two people were arrested. Demonstrations occurred each day thereafter. While the jails filled with peaceful African Americans, King negotiated with white businessmen, whose stores were losing business due to the protests. Although some of these businessmen were willing to consider desegregating their facilities and hiring African Americans, city officials held fast to segregationist policies. On April 10, these officials obtained an injunction prohibiting the demonstrations. This one came from a state court, not a federal one like others at this time were. King felt comfortable violating such an injunction, on the grounds of adhering to the federal laws with which it was at odds (Birmingham Civil Rights Institute).

Getting the other leaders of the campaign to violate the injunction, however, took some convincing by King, especially as many of the clergy felt bound to be in the pulpit--and not in jail--on the following Sunday, which was Easter. Nonetheless, King succeeded in persuading them to his cause, and personally led a march on Good Friday, April

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