Potorti SSC.343

1. The Birmingham Campaign

2. Content Warning
Today’s class will include images of racist paraphernalia and the Ku
Klux Klan, as well as discussion of racial terrorism and violence.
There will be NO graphic images of violence on the slides.

3. At right: A KKK mob attacked freedom riders in
Birmingham, AL (17 May 1961).
Birmingham, Alabama

4. “Bombingham” and “Dynamite Hill”
Between 1947 and 1965, nearly fifty bombings occurred in Birmingham, nearly all
unsolved. One neighborhood, so often the site of explosions that it became known as
“Dynamite Hill,” was targeted by white supremacists after Black middle-class
residents began moving in, a perceived breach of the so-called color line. The police
often knew the bombers and sometimes were aware in advance of their plans. In
other cases, front doors were burned or homes shot up. The daughter of civil rights
lawyer Arthur Shores later recalled, “Bullet shots through the window [were]
frequent. We had a ritual we followed: you hit the floor and you crawled to
safety…Our house was bombed twice. My mother found a third case of dynamite in
her garden before it went off.”

5. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth,
Alabama Movement for Human Rights
“The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was no stranger to the sound of
dynamite. / The defining moment for the Rev. Shuttlesworth
came during the 1956 Christmas night bombing that shattered
the church and crumbled the parsonage next door. He walked
out of the rubble almost unscathed, yet he recalled that the
mattress he was sleeping on was completely blown to bits. ‘We
didn’t find any pieces as large as my fists,’ he said…‘I could
hear a [police] officer say “I’m so sorry....I know these people
and I didn’t think that they would go this far....if I were you, I
would get out of town as quick as I can.” I said, ‘[O]fficer....go
back and tell your Klan brethren that...the war is on and I’m
here for the duration,’ Shuttlesworth once recalled. / ‘I went
and sat in back of a car....My six-year-old daughter curled up in
my lap and looked up in my face and said, “[T]hey can’t kill us
daddy, can they?” I said, “[N]o darling, they can’t kill folks.’”
This photo is from another bombing that targeted Shuttlesworth.
Original caption: “Alabama-Fred Shuttlesworth-Civil Rights
Activist in aftermath of 1958 Bethel Baptist Church bombing.”
Source: https://www.al.com/news/erry-
2018/07/f39190a3553390/bombingham.html

6. “Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
the first African-American woman to hold that post,
also recalls the sound of the bombs.
‘My father and his friends formed a brigade to keep
the community safe,’ Rice told MSNBC in 2013. ‘We
lived in a kind of cul-de-sac, and they would go to the
head of each parts of the cul-de-sac, and they had
their shifts with their weapons out there to keep Night
Riders out of the community. I don’t think they ever
actually shot anybody, but they shot their guns in the
air once in a while.’/ ‘That was how they protected,
the police couldn’t protect you. Coming home one
day from my grandparents’ house…we felt a bomb go
off and heard an explosion and my father put us back
in the car, and my mother said, ‘Where are you
going?’And he said. ‘I’m going to go to the police.’
And she said, ‘They probably set the bomb.’”
Original caption: “Birmingham Alabama Bombing
scene, 1960.”
Source: https://www.al.com/news/erry-
2018/07/f39190a3553390/bombingham.html

7. At left: A Ku Klux Klan robe worn during
the civil rights era, housed at the
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
Above: File photo: 1960 Ku Klux Klan hooded group.
Photo by Tom Langford / The Birmingham News.

8. The Birmingham Manifesto (3 Apr 1963)
The Alabama Movement for Human Rights (AMFHR), headed by Rev.
Shuttlesworth, released a statement explaining its grievances with city government
officials, merchants, and some religious leaders. The manifesto urged all residents,
regardless of race, to support the movement by boycotting businesses downtown.
“The patience of an oppressed people cannot endure forever. / Birmingham is part of the United
States and we are bona fide citizens. Yet the history of Birmingham reveals that very little of the
democratic process touches the life of the Negro in Birmingham. We have been segregated racially,
exploited economically, and dominated politically. Under the leadership of the Alabama Christian
Movement for Human Rights, we sought relief by petition for the repeal of city ordinances requiring
segregation and the institution of a merit hiring policy in city employment. We were rebuffed. We
then turned to the system of the courts. We weathered set-back after set-back, with all of its
costliness… / We have always been a peaceful people, bearing our oppression with super-human
effort. Yet we have been the victims of repeated violence, not only that inflicted by the hoodlum
element but also that inflicted by the blatant misuse of police power. Our memories are seared with
[the] painful mob experience of Mother’s Day 1961 during the Freedom Rides. For years, while our
homes and churches were being bombed, we heard nothing but the rantings and ravings of racist city
officials….

9. “The Negro protest for equality and justice has been a voice crying in the wilderness. Most of
Birmingham has remained silent, probably out of fear. In the meanwhile, our city has acquired the
dubious reputation of being the worst big city in race relations in the United States. Last fall, for a
flickering moment, it appeared that sincere community leaders from religion, business and industry
discerned the inevitable confrontation in race relations approaching. Their concern for the city’s
image and commonweal of all its citizens did not run deep enough. Solemn promises were made,
pending a postponement of direct action, that we would be joined in a suit seeking the relief of
segregation ordinances. Some merchants agreed to desegregate their restrooms as a good-faith start,
some actually complying, only to retreat shortly thereafter. We hold in our hands now, broken faith
and broken promises. / We believe in the American Dream of democracy, in the Jeffersonian doctrine
that ‘all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
among these being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”
“…The absence of justice and progress in Birmingham demands that we make a moral witness to
give our community a chance to survive…We appeal to the citizenry of Birmingham, Negro and
white, to join us in this witness for decency, morality, self-respect and human dignity. Your individual
and corporate support can hasten the day of ‘liberty and justice for all.’ This is Birmingham’s moment
of truth in which every citizen can play his part in her larger destiny.”
— The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, in behalf of the Negro community of
Birmingham.
L. Shuttlesworth, President
N. H. Smith, Secretary

10. 16th Street Baptist Church
Located across from Kelly
Ingram Park, the 16th Street
Baptist Church was a
movement church in part due
to its location, as civil rights
demonstrators often gathered
there before marches to
protest strict segregation
policies in downtown
Birmingham.

11. In 1963, Reverends Fred
Shuttlesworth (left) of the Alabama
Christian Movement for Human
Rights and Ralph Abernathy
(center) and Martin Luther King Jr.
of the SCLC led a march prior to
Easter weekend to encourage Black
residents of Birmingham to boycott
downtown stores that refused to
desegregate. Church leaders
intentionally wore denim and
casual clothes to indicate solidarity
with the working class of
Birmingham.

12. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
(16 Apr 1963)

13. Group Discussion:
“Letter from Birmingham Jail”
(1963)

14. Eugene “Bull” Connor
For years, Birmingham was essentially run by
Eugene “Bull” Connor, an arch-segregationist.
In his capacity as commissioner of public safety,
Connor was in charge of the police, fire
department, public school system, parks, and
libraries. He closed public parks and threatened
to close public schools to prevent desegregation,
and permitted the Ku Klux Klan to operate with
virtual impunity. During the 1961 Freedom
Rides, Connor had ordered police to stay away
from the Trailways bus station, allowing the
Klan to attack the riders without fear of
consequence. Members of the Birmingham
business community feared that Connor was bad
for the city’s reputation and therefore bad for
business. He was voted out in 1962, but he
challenged the election results and stayed in
power through May 1963.
“Damn the law — down here we make our own law.”
--Bull Connor

15. The “Children’s Crusade”
In response to a sharp decline in adult participation in daily demonstrations, James Bevel of the SCLC devised the
idea to enlist school children, some as young as seven years old, to leave school and march against segregation in
downtown Birmingham. King was hesitant to put children in harm’s way but was convinced by his advisors that this
strategy might be able to crack the city open. Thousands of children left school to join the protests, some without
their parents’ knowledge and others with their teacher’s consent. Weeks after, the city board of education voted to
expel all who had participated in the demonstrations, a decision later overturned by the court of appeals.

16. On the second day of the children’s
march, Birmingham law
enforcement, led by Connor,
turned fire hoses, police batons,
and dogs on peaceful protesters.
Nearly one thousand children and
teens were arrested during the
eight days of protests that became
known as the “Children’s
Crusade.”

18. Published on the front page of the New
York Times on May 4, this image of
police dogs attacking a Black passerby
in Birmingham reportedly made
President Kennedy “sick.” As he told
an audience in mid-May, such
“shameful scenes” were “so much
more eloquently reported by the news
cameras than by any number of
explanatory words.” The violent chaos
in Birmingham prompted Kennedy,
who two years earlier failed to protect
the Freedom Riders, to begin to move
more quickly to use federal force to
desegregate the South.

20. After weeks of demonstrations,
protestors and Birmingham
businesses finally agreed to a
compromise in which lunch
counters and fitting rooms
would be desegregated, and
more Black employees would
be hired.
Much of Birmingham’s white
leadership was unrepentant.
Mayor Art Hanes denounced the
businessmen as “gutless
traitors.” For his part, Connor
insisted, “I would have beaten
King if those damn merchants...
hadn’t given in.”

21. Following a KKK rally nearby, two bombs exploded
minutes apart at A.D. King’s house. The front of the
brick house was demolished, though King, his wife, and
their two children escaped without physical harm. That
same night, racial terrorists bombed the Gaston Motel,
where Martin Luther King Jr. often stayed while in
Birmingham. Despite the efforts of the King brothers
and other Black leaders, some Black residents answered
with violence, making clear the limits of Dr. King’s
influence and a growing restlessness and frustration with
calls for Black Americans to respond to violent racial
terrorism with peaceful nonviolent protest.
Dr. King told the New York Times, “I do not think the
bombings were perpetrated or even sanctioned by the
majority of the white people in Birmingham.’’
Birmingham mayor Arthur Hanes meanwhile publicly
blamed King and the Kennedys for what the Times
characterized as “Negro riots.”
Blast at A.D.W. King’s home, May 11, 1963.
Photo by Eldred Perry.
Dr. King and his brother, A.D., were both
targeted by bombings on the same night
(11 May 1963).

22. Gov. George Wallace
of Alabama
“I draw a line in the dust and toss the
gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and
I say segregation now, segregation
tomorrow, and segregation forever.”
Gov. George Wallace kept his promise to
stand in the doorway of the
University of Alabama to prevent two
African American students from enrolling
(11 Jun 1963).

23. In response to Governor Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent the
integration of the University of Alabama, President Kennedy addressed the nation on the
issue of civil rights (11 June 1963).

24. “The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal
rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow
Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark,
cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children
to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who
will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of
us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin
changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the
counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed
the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet
freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and
economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not
be fully free until all its citizens are free.”
--President Kennedy, in a nationally-televised speech responding
to Governor Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door.”

25. “…We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our
freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more
importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes;
that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or
caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?
…We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It
cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased
demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is
time to act in the Congress, in your State and local legislative body and, above
all, in all of our daily lives…Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as
violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality.”
--Kennedy (11 June 1963)

26. Assassination of NAACP Secretary Medgar Evers
(Jackson, Mississippi, 12 Jun 1963)
The night of Kennedy’s speech, white supremacist Byron De La
Beckwith, a member of the local KKK, assassinated Mississippi
NAACP leader Medgar Evers in his own driveway with his wife
and small children at home. De La Beckwith was tried twice in
1964. Both ended in mistrials, with separate all-white juries
unable to reach a verdict. The White Citizens’ Council paid De
La Beckwith’s legal fees. For years after, De La Beckwith
boasted that he had murdered Evers, including at a KKK rally.
In the 1980s, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger newspaper reported
that the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state
agency, had illegally assisted in De La Beckwith’s second
defense by using taxpayer funds to investigate potential jurors.
In 1994, the state of Mississippi reopened the case.
De La Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison,
where he died in 2001.

28. On Aug 20, 1963, while his wife and daughters
were at a movie, several sticks of
dynamite exploded, damaging the home of civil
rights attorney Arthur Shores. “No one was
injured, though a family dog was killed and
another ran away. / Shores was in bed in the
opposite end of the house at the time. / A riot
nearly erupted after the bombing, with six
people—all black—arrested for throwing rocks
and bricks. / It was one of multiple bombings the
family faced. Dynamite explosions went off two
weeks apart in August and September…. / In
1965, a bomb set to go off at the time of the start
of the Selma march was found in the yard of the
Shores home by Shores’ wife, Theodora. It was
defused by a bomb squad.”
Source: Alabama Media Group (2020) https://www.al.com/news/erry-
2018/07/f39190a3553390/bombingham.html

29. “Three civil rights workers stand guard
in front NAACP attorney Arthur
Shores’ house in Sept. 1963. The house
was blasted by dynamite the night
before.”
Photo: Associated Press
Source: NPR