The Birmingham confrontation, launched by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963, was a major effort to force desegregation in one of the most racially divided cities in the United States.
In spring 1963, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth invited King and the SCLC to Birmingham. Many civil
Rights activists nicknamed the city “Bombingham” because the metropolis was the site of 18 unsolved bombings in black neighborhoods and a vicious mob attack on people involved in the freedom rides to desegregate interstate transportation on Mother’s Day, 1961. King had come to Birmingham in the midst of political upheaval in the city government. Voters had decided to eliminate the three-man city commission and instead elect a mayor. This was done to force Eugene “Bull” Connor, the commissioner of public safety and the man responsible for the attack on the freedom riders, to step down. Connor refused to leave, however, and Birmingham housed two city administrations until the courts could adjudicate the matter.
During this time of political turmoil, the SCLC decided to launch “Project C” (for Confrontation). On April 3, 1963, “B Day” (for Birmingham), the SCLC staged sit-ins. On April 6, police arrested 45 protestors who were marching from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to City Hall. The next day, Palm Sunday, even more protestors were arrested, and two police dogs attacked 19-year-old protester Leroy Allen. In response to the protests, Judge W. A. Jenkins, Jr., issued an order preventing 133 of the city’s civil rights leaders, King, and his fellow SCLC leaders Ralph Abernathy and Shuttlesworth from organizing more demonstrations in the city. “Project C,” however, planned for King to be arrested on April 12, Good Friday. King did manage to get himself arrested and he was placed in solitary confinement. While in jail, King read an advertisement in the Birmingham News, taken out by white ministers, calling him a troublemaker. He responded by writing in the margins of the newspaper and on toilet paper a long essay that was published as his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities ‘unwise and untimely.’ . . . Frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action movement that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.”
King was released from the city jail on April 20. While he was in jail, the SCLC planned “D Day,” which was to include demonstrations by children. On May 2, children ranging in age from six to 18 gathered at Kelly Ingram Park, and around 1 P. M., 15 of the children began to march downtown singing “We Shall Overcome.” The children were arrested and put into police vans. In the same manner, children left the park in groups and were arrested by the police. Three hours later, the police had arrested 959 children and put them in jail. The next day, over a thousand children stayed out of school and gathered again in Kelly Ingram Park. “Bull” Connor was determined not to let the children march downtown, but he had no room left in the jails for them. Instead, he ordered firefighters out and turned hoses that shot water at high pressure at the children. The water was strong enough to break bones and many of the protesters rolled down the street as the water hit them. In addition, Connor also ordered police dogs to attack protesters as they tried to enter the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which was located across the street from the park. Reporters took pictures of the confrontation and the media portrayed the horror of children being attacked by dogs and high-pressure fire hoses.
The demonstrations only escalated and the jails became more overcrowded. On May 12, 1963, the home of King’s brother was bombed along with the A. G. Gaston Motel, which served as black integrationist headquarters. With the escalating violence, President John F. Kennedy ordered the National Guard to Birmingham and federalized the Alabama National Guard to bring order to the city. Finally, the BUSINESS community in Birmingham agreed to integrate lunch counters and hire more African Americans over the objections of city officials.
Further reading: Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000).
—Sarah Brenner
World History
