Civil Rights Events

Birmingham 1963

Children's Crusade

Resolution and Retaliation

 

On Monday, May 6, Comedian Dick Gregory arrived in Birmingham and marched with the young demonstrators. Like hundreds before him, he was arrested. Law enforcement officials were working over time to keep up with the arrests. …  Once again, Bull Connor summoned his firemen. With no place to run, no trees for protection, the demonstrators were hit with the full force of the water. By Monday night, 2,500 demonstrators had been arrested, over 2,000 of them children. All jails in the city and county were filled (No 5).

 

Tuesday, May 7th.  Fighting broke out between blacks and whites in the downtown area. Leading a group of child marchers, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was hit with the full force of a fire hose and had to be hospitalized.  The situation was rapidly approaching the riot proportions that James Bevel had feared.

 

Attorney General Robert Kennedy [had] sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to facilitate negotiations between prominent black citizens and representatives of Birmingham’s Senior Citizen's Council, the city’s business leadership.  The Senior Citizen’s Council sought a moratorium on street protests as an act of good faith before any final settlement was declared … Marshall encouraged campaign leaders to halt demonstrations, accept an interim compromise that would provide partial success, and negotiate the rest of their demands afterward. Some black negotiators were open to the idea … Hospitalized Shuttlesworth was not present at the negotiations … On 8 May King told the negotiators he would accept the compromise and call the demonstrations to a halt.

 

When Shuttlesworth learned that King intended to announce a moratorium he was furious—about both the decision to ease pressure off white business owners and the fact that he, as the acknowledged leader of the local movement, had not been consulted. Feeling betrayed, Shuttlesworth reminded King that he could not legitimately speak for the black population of Birmingham on his own: “Go ahead and call it off … When I see it on TV, that you have called it off, I will get up out of this, my sickbed, with what little ounce of strength I have, and lead them back into the street. And your name’ll be Mud” (Birmingham Campaign 7).   

 

Despite Shuttlesworth’s strong disapproval, the decision had been made and there was no going back.  Even after Burke Marshall tried to calm the ACMHR leader, he continued to rant and rave.  “I’ll be damned if you’ll have it like this.  You’re mister big, but you’re going to be mister S-H-I-T.  I’m sorry, but I cannot compromise my principles and the principles we established.”  Frustrated and disappointed, Shuttleworth went home (Jeter-Bennett 173-174; 349).

 

 King made the announcement anyway, but indicated that demonstrations might be resumed if negotiations did not resolve the situation shortly (Birmingham Campaign 7).   

 

Birmingham lawyer and social activist David Vann recalled: “After we reached the settlement, … to say we were going to take down the [segregationist] signs. We'd have a 60 day cooling off period and desegregate lunch counters and begin a program of employment in downtown Birmingham with at least three clerks hired. I think somebody in New York asked Reverend Shuttlesworth, did he -- Why he would settle for just three clerks in downtown Birmingham. And he said, ‘I meant three in every store.’ And the thing almost came unglued” (No 7).

 

The settlement [agreed upon May 10] called for desegregating lunch counters, department store dressing rooms, public restrooms and drinking fountains within the next 90 days; hiring and promoting African Americans on a nondiscriminatory basis, hiring blacks in stores and other industries by a newly appointed private fair employment committee within 60 days; releasing movement demonstrators on bond or “on their personal recognizance,” and creating an official biracial committee to convene two weeks later (Jeter-Barrett 179-180).

 

The next evening, May 11, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in the nearby town of Bessemer to express its outrage at and opposition to the accords.  Grand Dragon Robert Shelton criticized white negotiators for their involvement.  “These stores that want the Negro trade so much, these people who are selling out the whites, they don’t need our business.”

 

Threatening to harass those responsible for the recent settlement, Klansmen returned to Birmingham, raiding black neighborhoods, setting off a series of riots.  At 10:45 p.m. a group of vigilantes bombed the home of Dr. King’s younger brother Reverent A. D. King in an attempt to kill the SCLC leader.  Luckily, all seven members of his [A. D. King’s] family made it out safely.  Nearby neighbors quickly ran to the scene of the explosion to check on the King family.

 

As news of the bombing spread, more than one thousand people converged on the site.  A number of bystanders suggested retaliating against the vigilantes as well as the police officers who were trying to disperse the crowd.  Afraid a riot might break out, A.D. King addressed the bystanders about the importance of nonviolence.

 

Just as the reverend and other church leaders worked to disperse the crowd, a second bombing occurred at the Gaston Motel.  Vigilantes targeted Room 30 in hopes Dr. King would be there, but the SCLC leader had already left town to spend the weekend in Atlanta.  Moments after the explosion a crowd of black onlookers formed near the motel (Jeter-Bennett 182-183).

 

When law enforcement arrived, bystanders broke into frenzy.  “We threw rocks at white folks’ cars,” said Washington Booker, “roamed the streets, vandalized, burned anything the white folks owned.”

 

Once peaceful bystanders now began throwing bricks and bottles at police officers.  Chanting, “lill ‘em, kill ‘em”, they took to the streets, attacking patrol cars, fire trucks and storefronts.  As fires raged, Birmingham’s evening sky glowed in hues of red and orange.

 

Not everyone went downtown to riot.  Some came out of curiosity.  The Streeter family drove downtown that night.  “We got into a car and we came downtown.  It was scary – a full riot,” remembered Arnetta Streeter Gary.  Audrey Faye Hendricks rode downtown as well.  As they neared the Gaston Motel, they saw fires and turned around.  “It was a dangerous situation,” Hendricks said.  James Stewart’s parents decided not to go downtown, but he was aware of the rioting and what it all meant.  “The battle intensified,” he said.  “We went to jail … and we won-like a soccer game… The bombing were at a different level; they were trying to kill somebody.”

 

After having spent days in jail, some of the youth demonstrators were shocked by the amount of violence following the agreement.  At its height, nearly 2,500 people vandalized white and black owned businesses, as well as looted grocery stores, liquor stores, and other businesses.

 

Local law enforcement and sate patrolmen arrived downtown determined to restore order.  They stormed the streets beating rioters, releasing police dogs, and threatening to shoot protestors.  With so many rioters and onlookers crowding the roadways, it was impossible for firemen to extinguish burning buildings or for medics to care adequately for the injured.  Bull Connor’s infamous whiter armored truck thundered across the city, with an officer blaring through its loudspeaker, “Everybody get off the streets now.  We cannot get ambulances in here to help people unless you clear the streets.”

 

Witnessing the violence and the increasing danger, movement leaders began assisting police in their effort to restore calm.  SCLC’s Wyatt Walker used a megaphone to speak to the crowd.  “Please do not throw bricks anymore,” he pleaded.  “Ladies and gentlemen, will you cooperate by going to your homes?”  The rioters refused to comply. Some even yelled back: “They started it!  They started it!”

 

A. D. King tried to reach the people.  “We’re not mad anymore.  We’re saying: ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’”  He voiced his vehement opposition to the use of violence claiming it was the “tactic of the white man” and asked the people to join him in prayer and song before returning home peacefully (Jeter-Bennett 368-372).

 

 A few hours before dawn, the demonstrators finally made their way back to their homes.  The riot, the first of its kind in the 1960s, was over.  The uprising, though, illustrated to citizens, black and white, that it would require more than schoolchildren and nonviolent protests to fix Birmingham (Jeter-Bennett 183-184).

 

  Only dismantling the city’s historic white power structure and the ideology of white supremacy would provide black citizens full rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Until then, the unholy trinity of economic, social, and political oppression continued.

 

 On May 12 President John F. Kennedy ordered 3,000 federal troops into position at military bases near Birmingham and began to make preparations to federalize the Alabama National Guard.

 

On May 20 the Birmingham Board of Education announced all students who participated in the demonstrations would be either suspended or expelled. The SCLC and the NAACP immediately went to the local federal district court, where the judge upheld the ruling. On May 22, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision (King 8).

 

On May 23, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled on the municipal conflict in Birmingham.  The justices sided with Birmingham voters and declared Albert Boutwell and the rest of the newly elected city council the official governing body of the city.  … Bull Connor’s career as a political leader was over (Jeter-Bennett 190).  On the same day more than one thousand black student demonstrators were permitted to return to their classes.

 

Virulent supremacists were not done. 

 

 

Works cited:

 

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

 

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

 

“King, Children's Crusade sparked new dynamic in Civil Rights Movement.”  The Philadelphia Tribune.  January 8, 2016.  Web.  http://www.phillytrib.com/special_sections/king-children-s-crusade-sparked-new-dynamic-in-civil-rights/article_32a1f9dd-66df-574c-8ddb-83be1a2e77ce.html

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