Status Quo Ante: Birmingham, Alabama 1962‐1963 Birmingham was the largest industrial city in the South. The city was strictly segregated. All positions of power were held by whites. Voter registration among blacks was very low, and poll taxes and literacy tests effectively reduced black political power to zero. Birmingham was one place where black voters were asked, “How many bubbles in a bar of soap?” and “How many seeds in a watermelon?” If the election judges deemed their answer unacceptable, they were barred from voting. White Birmingham protester attacked by police dogs, spring 1963.
voters were asked other questions. Black leaders described Birmingham as “the belly of the beast” of segregation in the south. Fred Shuttlesworth after his arrest in Birmingham in 1961
Birmingham had a very substantial black population. Large steel mills and other heavy industry depended upon their labor. The schools and parks may not have been integrated, but the economy was, and by the early 60’s Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, began active campaigns for civil rights reforms using nonviolent boycotts and protests to pressure Birmingham’s employers and merchants to moderate their segregationism. In early 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined the protests Birmingham at the invitation of Shuttlesworth. The two pastors and founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Council planned new measures to This bomb attack on a Birmingham
disrupt the busy Easter shopping season and pressure Birmingham church killed four black children in
businesses to support change. September, 1963. Bobby Frank Cherry
was questioned several times but was
not charged until 2002. He was
Birmingham police, supported by racist organizations such as the convicted at age 71 and sentenced to
life in prison.
White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan, responded with intimidation, violence, repression, and murder. So many black churches were bombed that the city was nicknamed “Bombingham.” Birmingham Police Chief Bull Connor was the face of this response. Connor was notorious for violent enforcement of segregation and vicious disruption of civil rights protests. Photos of his measures—especially the use of police dogs and firehoses on protesters—damaged the segregationist cause by creating outrage across the nation at the violence of the city’s repression. To make it more interesting, Birmingham held city Eugene “Bull” Connor
elections that spring. All of the candidates, including Bull Connor, were white men who advocated continuing segregation. Regardless, King and Shuttlesworth put the economic campaign on hold, in the hope that more moderate leadership might be elected. The election was close. Connor declared victory and began acting as mayor. Iconic photo by Charles Moore of sit-in protesters being
Albert Boutwell eventually won a runoff, but Connor refused to vacate the city firehosed by Birmingham police, spring 1963.
offices. When the protests resumed Birmingham had two governments—one with control of a police department. The election almost certainly created a more dangerous atmosphere in Birmingham. In April, eight clergymen, all ‘moderates’ on the Civil Rights question and leaders of important white churches, published a letter titled “A Call to Unity.” The letter criticized King and the protests, though in mild and relatively conciliatory terms. Dr. Martin Luther King being arrested at a lunch counter,
Birmingham, 1963. Photo by Charles Moore.
On April 16, King was arrested on a misdemeanor charge (‘parading without a permit’) and lodged in the Birmingham City Jail. Harvey Shapiro, an editor at the New York Times, Booking photo, Birmingham, AL,
April 16, 1963.
had asked King to write a response to ‘A Call to Unity.’ King’s piece, written on scraps of paper and the margins of newspapers, was smuggled out piece by piece by lawyers and friends.