U.S. Historical Fiction

Civil Rights Events

Birmingham 1963

Children's Crusade

Fire Hoses and Police Dogs

On May 3, more than 3,000 student protesters and onlookers filled the streets of Birmingham. Unlike the day before, Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor wanted his officers to keep the marchers away from the downtown business sector without arresting anyone because the city and county jails were filled to capacity. Toward this end, Conner ordered Captain G. V. Evans of the Birmingham Fire Department to use fire hoses on the demonstrators. The fire hoses, explained, Connor, “were equipped with monitor guns that had the ability to remove bark off a tree at a distance on one hundred feet.

Capt. Evans warned the marchers to disperse, and when they ignored his command, he signaled the firemen to hose the schoolchildren. In the nonviolent workshops conducted by James Bevel and other movement organizers, the children learned to protect themselves by placing their hands on their faces and tucking their bodies into a ball. But the pressure from the hoses forced many demonstrators to retreat. “The little bit of training we had did no good,” said Arnetta Streeter Gary. “I can remember us balling up hugging together, and the water just washing us down the street. … Forceful. It was like pins maybe, sticking you in your arms and legs and things. The water was very, very forceful (Jeter-Bennett 147-150; 285).

To fight the high-powered blasts, some children joined hands trying to keep their balance in a human chain. But the torrents were too fierce; hit by the rocket-bursts of water the kids whirled one way, then the other, dragging down their comrades.

To supercharge the water jets, firefighters had funneled the flow of two hoses into one nozzle, packing it with such ballistic fury it dislodged bricks from buildings. These jets were driven across the kids’ bodies, lacerating their flesh, tearing clothing off their backs; hitting the elm trees in nearby Kelly Ingram Park, the blasts ripped off the bark. The children, knocked to the pavement, crawled away; some struggled to their feet with bloody noses and gashes on their faces (Levingston 4).

Captain Evans had now ordered all marchers and onlookers to evacuate Ingram Park. One person reported having seen “two girls run through Kelly Ingram Park clad in their undergarments after the water streams ripped away their outer clothing.”

“Once that water … hit me,” said Gwendolyn Sanders, “I didn’t know if I was going to survive it or not because the pressure from that hose was so great that it would knock your breath away” (Jeter-Bennett 148-149; 288).

Carolyn McKinstry recalled: The water came out with such tremendous pressure and, uh, it’s a very painful experience, if you’ve never been hit by a fire hose and I thought, whoa. You know, I got knocked down and then we found ourselves crouching together and trying to find something to hold onto. People ran, people hid, people hugged buildings or whatever they could to keep the water hoses from just…just knocking them here and there (Birmingham 6).

The water hose hurt a lot. I was hit with the water hose on this side running from the water. I had a navy blue sweater on. The water tore a big hole in my sweater and swiped part of my hair off on that side. I just remember the sting and pain on my face. It was very painful, and you couldn’t escape. There were a few points where we were trying to stand up and hold onto a wall. It was a terrific pain from the force, which I later learned was something like one hundred pounds of force per inch. That was the point at which I started thinking, ‘Do I really want to be a part of this, or do I have what it takes to continue on this level?’ … I honestly was afraid of dogs, did not like being wet up. I felt very disrespected when I was wet up with the water and my hair. We were just marching (Jeter-Bennett 148).

As marchers screamed, firemen could be heard yelling, “Knock the niggers down.” Some of the spectators grew angry at the sigh of young people being knocked down by the torrents of water.

Arnetta Streeter Gary’s parents witnessed it all. “My daddy and mother, a lot of adults, came around. … Little did my daddy know I was participating. When he saw the firemen putting water on me, he got upset,” she said. “He was going to … turn the water off. My mother, she was struggling with him to keep him from going over there. They would have killed him. That’s what she told me. … ‘You could have gotten your father killed.’”

While Mrs. Streeter successfully restrained her husband, other bystanders began to retaliate by throwing rocks, soda bottles, and bricks at the officers and firemen. Washington Booker III had not attended the nonviolent workshops and there was no one there to restrain him and his friends. “We would throw a brick, a bottle, and then we’d take off … That’s what we were doing while everybody else was peacefully marching – looking for opportunities to strike a blow” (Jeter-Bennett 150, 292).

Washington Booker, … a student at Ullman, … had been reluctant about participating in the marches — not because he didn't believe in the cause, but because he knew what could happen. Booker grew up in the projects in a place called Loveman Village. "It was nothing for the police to call you over to the car and tell you to stick your head in the window so they could tell you something. Then they would roll up the window on you," he said. "Rarely did a day go by when you didn't hear about a black man or a black boy being abused by police (King 3).

[Bull] Connor responded [to the rock and brick throwing] by ordering the police department’s K-9 unit to the park. “All you gotta do is tell them you’re going to bring the dogs. Look at ‘em run. … I want to see them dogs work. Look at those niggers run,” said the police commissioner.

Mary Gadson, a teenager demonstrator, vividly remembered Bull Connor threatening to sic dogs on her and some other marchers. “We were in a group that was supposed to march downtown, but we never made it because the police stopped us. Bull Connor was right out on Sixth Avenue. He had the dogs out there, and he said if we marched, he was going to turn the dogs on us. They had the fire hoses also. The water was strong. It could knock you down. And he let ‘em go and sprayed us. I got wet and almost got bitten” (Jeter-Bennett 151, 296).

The next day [Saturday, May 4], King offered encouragement to the parents of the young protesters in a speech delivered at the 16th Street Baptist Church. According to biography.com, he said, “Don’t worry about your children; they are going to be all right. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail, for they are not only doing a job for themselves, but for all of America and for all of mankind” (King 4).

President Kennedy had already called Dr. King to ask him to remove children from the protests. King had refused, recognizing that “the welfare of the black schoolchildren afforded the Birmingham movement the leverage it needed to move the state and federal governments to act in their favor.” King had announced that the demonstrations would continue through the weekend, that the ACMHR and SCLC “remained committed to the cause and refused to quit until city officials met their demands.”

By now, some children had been in jail for forty-eight hours and stories about rat bites, inadequate food, a lack of beds, and aggressive interrogations were beginning to circulate. “Don’t worry about them,” he told the parents. “They are suffering for what they believe, and they are suffering to make this a better nation” (Jeter-Bennett 308).

Marchers concealed their involvement in the movement by hiding in the crowd; they looked like ordinary pedestrians and spectators. The goal was to confuse Bull Connor and policemen so they could make their way downtown before being stopped and sent to jail. Movement organizers referred to day 3 as “Operation Confusion.” As students exited Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the staged protesters began making their way downtown. This made it difficult for Connor and his officers to contain the protesters and prevent them from entering Birmingham’s business district. Arnetta Street-Gary’s mother and family friend Mrs. Robey and other “movement mothers “ drove youth demonstrators to the white business district.

Once again, Conner resorted to police dogs and fire hoses to coral marchers. Protesters and onlookers ran in the streets and around Kelly Ingram Park to avoid being attacked. Other police officers arrested demonstrators. Freeman A. Hrabowski III squared off against Bull Connor in front of the steps of City Hall. “My heart was pounding, and my head was swimming with fear (Jeter-Barrett 320).

The police looked mean, it was frightening. We were told to keep singing these songs and so I’m singing, [sings] I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round, keep on a walking, keep on a talking, marching on to freedom land. And amazingly the other kids were singing and the singing elevates when you can imagine hundreds of children singing and you feel a sense of community, a sense of purpose.

There was Bull Connor, and I was so afraid, and he said, “What do you want little nigra?” And I mustered up the courage and I looked up at him and I said, “Suh,” the southern word for sir, “we want to kneel and pray for our freedom.” That’s all I said. That’s all we wanted to do. And he did pick me up, and he did, and he did spit in my face, he really…he was so angry (Birmingham 5).

At 16, Cardell Gay had watched his father get involved in the movement, helping to guard Mr. Shuttlesworth's home at night. Then he began attending the Monday night meetings himself. When the call went out for student volunteers, he responded -- in spite of, and because of, his teachers at Hayes, an all-black high school.

''In class, they'd say, 'Don't leave campus or you'll be expelled,' '' Mr. Gay recalled. ''But in private, they'd say, 'Go on. I can't do it, I'd lose my job. But do it up. Keep it up.' ''

The first time he marched, he was picked up by the police near a hot dog stand on Second Avenue. The next day, he was arrested for praying and blocking the entrance to the Pizitz department store, and spent three days in the city jail.

The third time he went [Saturday], he got wet. ''The hoses were so strong,'' he said. ''And it was warm water, too. It would knock us all over the place, send you tumbling' (Halbfinger 3).

On Saturday, the dogs and water hoses provoked [more] angry responses from bystanders, some of them carrying weapons. Seeing the beginnings of violence, James Bevel borrowed a bull horn from a nearby policeman.

So I took the bull horn and said, "Okay, get off the streets now. We're not going to have violence. If you're not going to ... (inaudible) policemen, you're not going to be in the movement and, you know." So it was strange, I guess, to them. I'm with the police talking through the bull horn and giving orders and everybody was obeying the orders. [laughter] It was like, wow. But what was at stake was the possibility of a riot and that once in a movement, once a riot break out, you have to stop, takes you four or five more days to get reestablished and I was trying to avoid that kind of situation (No 4).

While King faced criticism for exposing children to violence—most notably from Malcolm X, who said that “real men don’t put their children on the firing line”— King maintained that the demonstrations allowed children to develop “a sense of their own stake in freedom” (King 4).

Media coverage from the second day of the Children’s March generated sympathy and outrage nationally and internationally. Dr. King and other movement organizers timed the protests to take advantage of the deadlines for nightly news programming and print media.

Images and film footage of young protesters being strayed with high pressure hoses and attacked by police dogs drew attention to the “horrors of segregation and the moral authority of southern black folk.”

This was exactly what ACMHR/SCLC had intended when they organized D-Day and Double D-Day; they wanted to expose America’s racial dilemma. “We knew we were being mistreated by our society and we wanted a different world,” said Freeman Hrabowski. “We wanted society to look us in our faces and treat us as human beings worthy of respect. We deserved respect; we were American citizens. We were asking our country to live up to its Constitution” (Jeter-Bennett 299-301).

Works cited:

“Birmingham and the Children’s March.” R&E: Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. April 26, 2013. Web. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/04/26/april-26-2013-birmingham-and-the-childrens-march/16051/

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

Halbfinger, David M. “Birmingham Recalls a Time When Children Led the Fight.” The New York Times. May 2, 2003. Web. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/us/birmingham-recalls-a-time-when-children-led-the-fight.html

Jeter-Bennett, Gisell. “’We’re Going Too!’ The Children of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement.” The Ohio State University. 2016. Web. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1452263338&disposition=inline