We leave Mississippi in 1963 temporarily to discover what has been happening during much of the year in Birmingham, Alabama.

Civil Rights Events

Birmingham 1963

SCLC Comes to Town

 

Birmingham, Alabama, was a major industrial hub of the South due to the wartime industries of previous world wars. Birmingham was very attractive to all races, as many of the factories and shipyards that supplied the war effort employed thousands.

 

President F. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in 1941 and integrated industries that supplied the WWII effort. For the first time, African Americans were able to work alongside their White counterparts, and were eligible for promotions to supervisory positions. However, this also made Birmingham a battle ground where the antebellum past and the Civil Rights Movement collided in violence and protest.

 

The more African Americans moved into the middle class, and in turn began to live middle class lifestyles, the City of Birmingham dug their heels in to prevent their progress. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) had a long standing hold on the city, and it was their job to reinforce the social mores that governed everyone. African Americans needed to remember their place, and in times when they asserted their rights and ventured outside of the social caste system created for them, there was violence (Harris 1).

 

Martin Luther King described Birmingham as “America’s worst city for racism.  … the KKK had castrated an African American; [had actually] pressured the city to ban a book from book stores as it contained pictures of black and white rabbits and wanted black music banned on radio stations” (Trueman 1).

 

For decades Birmingham had represented the citadel of white supremacy. No black resident was ever secure from the wide sweep of racist terrorism, both institutionalized and vigilante. Conditions in the state had become even worse with the election of Governor George Wallace in 1962, who stated upon taking his oath of office, "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Wallace vowed that the federal government would not dictate racial policies in his state. For years, civil rights activists had conceived of plans to attack Birmingham's Jim Crow laws; now it seemed the utmost priority (Birmingham Desegregation 1).

 

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth had fought the segregated system for more than a decade. 

 

Having witnessed the organization of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Shuttlesworth organized his own group, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in June 1956 after the state outlawed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In December 1956, when the federal courts ordered the desegregation of Montgomery's buses, Shuttlesworth asked the officials of Birmingham's transit system to end segregated seating, setting a December 26 deadline.  He intended to challenge the laws on a bus on that day, but on the night of December 25, Klansmen bombed Bethel Baptist Church and parsonage, nearly assassinating Shuttlesworth  (Eskew 1).

 

They blew the floor out from under my bed, spaces I guess 15 feet. The springs I was lying on, we never found. I walked out from this and instead of running away from the blast, running away from the Klansmen, I said to the Klansmen police that came, he said, "Reverend, if I were you, I'd get out of town as fast as I could." I said, "Officer, you're not me. You go back and tell your Klan brethren that if God could keep me through this, then I'm here for the duration." I think that's what gave people the feeling that I wouldn't run, I didn't run, and that God had to be there (Walk 1).

 

Shuttlesworth emerged out of the rubble of his dynamited house and led a protest the next morning that resulted in a legal case against the city's segregation ordinance.

 

Coinciding with school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, Shuttlesworth arranged a challenge to Birmingham's all-white Phillips High School in September 1957, nearly suffering death at the hands of an angry mob. Segregationist vigilantes again greeted Shuttlesworth when he desegregated the train station. In 1958, Shuttlesworth organized a boycott of Birmingham's buses in support of the ACMHR legal case against segregated seating. Shuttlesworth's aggressive strategy of direct action alienated him from Birmingham's established black leadership. Many people in the black middle class found as too extreme the intense religious belief held by ACMHR members that God was going to end segregation.

 

Prompted by the national sit-in movement begun by four black college men in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February 1960, a group of black students in Birmingham from Miles College and Daniel Payne College held a prayer vigil. Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR supported their efforts. When a national group of black and white demonstrators undertook the Freedom Rides in May 1961, Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR provided assistance, rescuing the stranded protesters outside Anniston as well as those who suffered a Klan attack at the Birmingham Trailways Station. In spring 1962, Birmingham's black college students initiated the Selective Buying Campaign and, with support from Shuttlesworth and ACMHR, it became the catalyst for the spring 1963 demonstrations.

 

Chosen as secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when it organized in 1957, Shutttlesworth had been an active member of the region's leading civil rights group. But he was frustrated because he believed that the SCLC lacked clear direction under King's leadership. Shuttlesworth watched the SCLC intervene in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and fail to successfully challenge segregation in a manner that forced reforms in local race relations. Aware that King's reputation had suffered from this defeat, Shuttlesworth invited the SCLC to assist him and the ACMHR in Birmingham. Believing that a success would restore his reputation as a national civil rights leader, King agreed. Shuttlesworth hoped King's prestige would attract the black masses and thus mobilize Birmingham's black community behind the joint ACMHR-SCLC campaign (Eskew 2-3). 

     

In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group’s “Birmingham Manifesto,” the campaign was “a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive” (Birmingham Campaign 1).

 

As 1963 began, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC were coming off a campaign in Albany, Georgia, which the New York Herald Tribune called "one of the most stunning defeats of King's career." SCLC had spent over a year in Albany attempting to integrate the city's public facilities. Although the president of the Albany Movement, Dr. William Anderson, said that the campaign was "an overwhelming success, in that there was a change in the attitude of the people involved," King felt that, "we got nothing." The schools remained segregated; the city parks were closed to avoid integration; the libraries were integrated, but only after all the chairs were removed. SCLC official Andrew Young remembered King as being "very depressed." He was looking to start another campaign, and he badly needed a victory (Cozzens 1).

 

Birmingham had had an election.  The city’s three-member commission system was to be replaced by a mayor and city council system.   Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Conner, recognizing that his position was about to be axed, had run for mayor and been defeated by Albert Boutwell April 2.  When the newly elected officials were to be sworn into office, the three commissioners, including Conner, refused to step down.  Suddenly there were two systems of government exercising power.  Connor continued to exercise his power as Public Safety Commissioner.

 

Leaders from the ACMHR met with SCLC officials to plan strategy. Having learned from prior mistakes, King's lieutenant, the Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker, proposed a limited campaign of sit-ins and pickets designed to pressure merchants and local business leaders into demanding the city commission repeal the municipal segregation ordinances (Eskew 4).

 

Interviewed by Eyes on the Prize years later, Walker revealed his detailed planning.  : Learning by the Albany circumstance, I targeted three stores.   … And since the 16th Street Baptist Church was going to be our headquarters, I had it timed as to how long it took a youngster to walk down there, how long it would take an older person to walk down there, how long it would take a middle aged person to walk down there. And I picked out what would be the best routes. Under some subterfuge, I visited all three of these stores and counted the stools, the tables, the chairs, etc., and what the best method of ingress and egress was (Walk 2).

 

Twenty-one demonstrators were arrested on April 2, the first day of protest.  Until the courts decided which city government was the legal one, Bull Connor remained in charge of the police and fire departments. Connor adopted Albany sheriff Laurie Pritchett’s restraint in making arrests.  Actions expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to register voters. Hundreds were arrested.

  

 {Yet], from the outset, the campaign confronted an apathetic black community, an openly hostile established black leadership, and Bull Connor's "nonviolent resistance" in the form of polite arrests of the offenders of the city's segregation ordinances. With no sensational news, the national media found nothing to report, and the campaign floundered.

 

…

 

Shuttlesworth led the first of many protest marches on City Hall to emphasize the refusal of the city commission to issue parade permits to the protestors. As the number of demonstrations increased, police arrested more ACMHR members, consequently draining the financial resources of the campaign. Black bystanders gave the campaign the appearance of mass support, but the vast majority of Birmingham's black residents remained uninvolved. A more serious threat came from established black leaders who opposed the civil rights campaign and actively worked to undermine Shuttlesworth by negotiating with the white power structure (Eskew 4-5).

 

Moderate White lawyer David Vann told his Eyes on the Prize interviewer: “I was upset with Dr. King because he wouldn't give us a chance to prove what we could do through the political processes. And a year and a day after Connor had been elected with the largest vote in history, a majority of the people of this city voted to terminate his office. And when he ran for mayor, they rejected him” (Walk 3)

 

 

The Kennedy administration also thought that the demonstrations were ill-timed.

On April 10th, Birmingham obtained a state court injunction, ordering an end to the demonstrations. Discouraged, Dr. King worried that the campaign, as in Albany, would stall.   Interviewed by Eyes of the Prize, Andrew Young revealed the movement’s situation.

 

We had about five or six hundred people in jail, but all the money was gone and we couldn't get people out of jail. And the business community, black business community and some of the white clergy, were pressuring us to call off the demonstrations and just get out of town. And we didn't know what to do. And he sat there in room 30 in the Gaston Motel and Martin didn't say anything. And then finally, he got up and he went in the bedroom and he came back with his blue jeans on and his jacket and he said, "Look," he said, "I don't know what to do. I just know that something has got to change in Birmingham. I don't know whether I can raise money to get people out of jail. I do know that I can go into jail with them." And not knowing how it's going to work out, he walked out of the room and led his demonstration and went to jail.

 

Local white clergy were criticizing King and the campaign.  Young reported: The ministers published in the newspapers a diatribe against Martin calling him a troublemaker and saying that he was there stirring up trouble to get publicity. And he sat down and took that newspaper and he had no paper, and he was in solitary confinement. And he started writing an answer to that one page ad around the margins of the New York Times (Walk 4-5).  His rebuttal, titled “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” was subsequently printed in newspapers across the country.

 

King made salient points.

 

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

 

…

 

Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

 

…

 

There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

 

…

 

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.  … The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

 

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

 

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. 

 

…

 

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

 

…

 

The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history (Letter 1-3)

 

King’s request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied. After she communicated her concern to the Kennedy administration, Birmingham officials permitted King to call home. Bail money was made available, and he was released on 20 April 1963 (Birmingham Campaign 3).

 

Although King's decision to seek arrest marked a turning point in his life as a leader, it did little to increase support for the faltering ACMHR-SCLC campaign. …after a month of exhaustive demonstrations, the stalemate with white authorities suggested another Albany and the looming defeat of the Birmingham Campaign (Eskew 5).

 

 

Works cited:

 

“Birmingham Campaign.”  Stanford: The martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.  Web.  https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign

 

“The Birmingham Desegregation Campaign.” Armistad Digital Resource.  Web.  http://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era/birmingham_desegregation_campaign.html

 

Cozzens, Lisa.  “Birmingham.”  Watson.org.  Web.  http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/birming.html

 

Eskew, Glenn T.  “Birmingham Campaign of 1963.”  Encyclopedia of Alabama.  Web.  http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1358

 

Harris, Joanna.  “The 1963 Birmingham Campaign: Events & Impact.”  Study.com.  Web. https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-1963-birmingham-campaign-events-impact.html

 

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]" African Studies Center – University of Pennsylvania.  Web.  https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

 

“No Easy Walk.”  Amazon AWS.  Web.  http://wgbhprojects.s3.amazonaws.com/EYES%20ON%20THE%20PRIZE/Transcripts/EOTP-104-NoEasyWalk_TRANSCRIPT.pdf

Trueman, C. N.  “Birmingham 1963.”  The History Learning Site.  Web.  https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-civil-rights-movement-in-america-1945-to-1968/birmingham-1963/