Birmingham
1.
Birmingham protests
In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama became a key location in the struggle for civil rights as
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led a series of boycotts and
demonstrations in the city's downtown area. One of the most segregated cities of the
South, Birmingham turned violent in May as the police attempted to suppress the
protests.
Plans for the Birmingham campaign began in January 1963. SCLC leaders hoped to
force a crisis in the city by boycotting downtown stores and leading sit-in demonstrations
at whites-only lunch counters to make whites negotiate with black leaders for an end to
racial segregation. The activities began on April 3. Thirty-five people were arrested in the
first three days, and 42 more were arrested on April 6 when Fred L. Shuttlesworth led a
march toward City Hall. The next day, violence briefly erupted when police and a police
dog attacked a crowd of African-American spectators at a downtown march led by A. D.
King, the brother of Martin Luther King Jr. The attack received widespread press
coverage, which gave the SCLC a needed boost. On April 10, however, city officials
obtained a court order barring any more demonstrations.
By the end of April, the Birmingham campaign was losing steam. Martin Luther King had
been arrested for continuing to lead marches despite the injunction, and the SCLC was
finding it difficult to recruit volunteers. SCLC staffer James Bevel suggested recruiting
students for the campaign, and the next phase began in May with more than 6,000 high
school and college students trained in the tactics of nonviolence. More than 1,000 of the
students marched toward downtown Birmingham on May 2 singing freedom songs, and
more than 900 were arrested. On May 3, another 1,000 met at the Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church to prepare to march, but by this time, the police had run out of patience.
Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor ordered the police to keep the
students inside the church, but many escaped and congregated across the street at a
park. Connor ordered them to return to the church, and when they refused, he ordered
the police to "let 'em have it." The resulting violence filled that night's national TV news
and the front pages of newspapers across the country. Police attacked the crowd with
billy clubs and police dogs, and firefighters drenched the protesters with high-powered
hoses. Trained in nonviolence, most of the crowd did not retaliate, but some people
threw bottles and rocks at the police and firefighters. More than 200 people were
arrested.
During the next week, the students continued to march and continued to be arrested. On
May 7, after another 1,000 students were arrested, more than 3,000 African Americans
crowded into downtown Birmingham and disrupted traffic and commerce. Alabama
governor George Wallace sent 800 state troopers to Birmingham, and white leaders
realized it was time to negotiate. On May 10, after several days of meetings, black
leaders and white city officials reached an agreement. Downtown Birmingham lunch
counters, restrooms, and water fountains would be desegregated; businesses would
maintain nondiscriminatory hiring practices; and a biracial committee would oversee
further desegregation in exchange for an end to the boycott and demonstrations.
The months of tension weren't over, however. White resistance to the agreement
culminated in the bombing of the SCLC headquarters and the home of A. D. King, and
young African Americans rioted in downtown Birmingham in response. President John F.
Kennedy stood behind the agreement and sent federal troops to restore order. The
Birmingham campaign and the riots that resulted motivated hundreds of civil rights
demonstrations across the country and led to the end of Alabama's segregation laws.
"Birmingham protests." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2011.
Token: 33B3DC1ED891E56F17E3B2B784E1F0A5
2.
Selections from Martin Luther King Jr.: Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
On April 16, 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this public letter to his pastoral colleagues from his jail
cell in Birmingham, Alabama. King had been imprisoned along with hundreds of other civil rights activists for their
peaceful protests in the city against the notorious anti-black attitude of Birmingham's police force. When television
cameras captured police officers turning fire hoses on peaceful African-American protestors, much of the American
public became more sympathetic to the civil rights movement. King's letter was widely published, and his passionate
yet reasonable arguments on behalf of the civil rights movement brought him national attention and respect.
MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:
While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement
calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to
answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross
my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I
would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine
goodwill and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement
in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the
oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in
a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who
have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard
the words [sic]"Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This
"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see with the distinguished
jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Source: Martin Luther King Jr.: Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2011.
3.
Birmingham, Alabama, and the Civil Rights
Movement in 1963
The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil
rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph
David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions
became high when the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress
on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a
campaign to register African American to vote in
Birmingham.
On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man
was seen getting out of a white and turquoise
Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon
afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded
killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins
(14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley
(14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other
people were also hurt by the blast.
Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a
week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama
needed a "few first-class funerals."
A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed
the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged
with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October,
1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a sixmonth jail sentence for having the dynamite.
The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested
the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization
had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original
trial.
In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Chambliss died in an Alabama prison on 29th October, 1985.
On 17th May, 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing had
been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group, the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four
men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible
for the crime. Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested and Blanton has since been
tried and convicted.
Source: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/randall/birmingham.htm
4.
"Telegram from L.H. Foster, 05/13/63," Alabama Governor Wallace Administrative
files, SG12655, folder 3, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery,
Alabama.
5.
http://www.facinghistory.org/video/reverend-fred-shuttlesworth-recounts-bombing
Fred Shuttlesworth speaks about non-violence.
6.
Fred Shuttlesworth
1922 - present
Once called "the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South" by Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth has been a major leader of the civil rights movement for more than half
a century. Rev. Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
(ACMHR) in May 1956. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against segregated buses in
Montgomery, Alabama, he rallied the membership of the ACMHR to challenge segregated buses
in Birmingham. The dedicated minister continued to lead protests even after his home was
bombed on Christmas Day in 1956. The bombing did not injure Shuttlesworth, but in 1957 he
was beaten with whips and chains as he led efforts to integrate an all-white public school.
Undaunted by the physical attacks on him, the minister became one of the founders of SCLC in
1957 and served as SCLC's secretary (1958-1970). He participated in sit-ins at segregated lunch
counters in 1960, and in 1961, joined forces with the Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) to
organize the Freedom Rides against segregated interstate buses in the South. In 1963, while
leading a protest against segregation in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth was slammed against a wall
by the force of the water pressure from fire hoses turned on demonstrators at the order of local
sheriff Bull Connor. The minister was hospitalized but undeterred. Shuttlesworth carried on his
fight against racism and homelessness after moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the early 1960s. He is
the founding pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church (1966-2006) in that city.
Shuttlesworth went on to help organize the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
In the 1980s, Shuttlesworth established the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation in Cincinnati. That
organization has provided grants to help hundreds of low-income families purchase homes.
Fred Shuttlesworth was the first of nine children born to Alberta Robinson Shuttlesworth. His
stepfather, William Nathan Shuttlesworth, struggled to support his family as a farmer. Young
Fred earned a B.A. degree from Selma University (1951) and a B.S. degree from Alabama State
Teachers College (1952). He became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham,
Alabama in 1953. He was pastor of several other churches in Alabama before moving to
Cincinnati.
Rev. Shuttlesworth served briefly as president of the SCLC in 2004. Though he retired from the
ministry in 2006, he continues to serve as a courageous leader of the civil rights movement.
7.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LZATg8hSW3AC&pg=PT16&lpg=PT16&dq=fred+shuttles
worth+children&source=bl&ots=5Ai32VlDfx&sig=oq7J07OpJINKYBK2dOD0R9ZOY4Q&hl=
en&ei=4IOfTdqeFOvQiAK9pcj4Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDo
Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=fred%20shuttlesworth%20children&f=false
Click the link above to read an account of the bombing of his house by Fred
Shuttlesworth’s ten year old son.