The Success Of The Birmingham Campaign

King had a vision that one day all races would be treated equally. Being the educated man that he was, receiving his Doctorate from Boston University, Dr. King never saw failure as an option. King was a third generation Baptist Minister and was the Leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Dr. King was from the South and was very familiar with the city of Birmingham which was known as the most violently segregated city in the United States. An affiliate of Dr. King’s invited him to Birmingham to engage in a nonviolent protest to which he agreed. During the nonviolent protest Dr. King was arrested for protesting without a permit. While in a Birmingham County jail cell Martin Luther King explains issues within the past day’s society that needed to be addressed including the church, the white moderates, and how he had been labeled an extremist.

This was a good thing for the children because they got away from the police and rejoined the march. On the first day of the children's march, 959 children were arrested. The next day, twice as many children came ready to march. This time Eugene “Bull” Connor was prepared to stand against the children and protesters. Eugene “Bull” Connor was a police chief in Alabama during the protests in downtown Birmingham. Connor told Birmingham police officers to set loose the dogs and the firemen to sprayed the marchers with the firehoses. People were seeing what Connor was doing to the children and people were horrified. President Kennedy got involved and appeared on television with a new plan, if the law pass, segregation in public places would be illegal. Birmingham’s leader finally agreed to MLK’s demands, after a long and hard fought battle, segregation was ended in the

Thus, the Civil Rights Movement started in the most segregated city, Birmingham. The Birmingham campaign was organized by the SCLC having Dr. Martin Luther King as a leader. From all the mistakes done in Albany, Georgia, a lesson was learned that they had to focus on one aspect to desegregate instead of dispersing their effort by trying to desegregate everything at once. Thus, the SCLC and SNCC came up with the Project “C” emphasizing mainly on three parts, including economic boycott, mass march on City Hall, and “D-Day,” where parents were asked to send their children to protest. The goal of participating children in the protest was to gain sympathy and attention from the world. The police chief in Birmingham, Eugene Bull Connor, was a racist that directly opposed the civil rights movement. Unlike Laurie Pritchett’s way of defeating the Albany movement by being nonaggressive, Bull Connor used every kind of nonviolent actions, including dogs and fire hoses against the protesters including school children. In addition, state injunction was issued that banned further demonstrations in Birmingham. Nevertheless, protesters kept marching. After uniting black African Americans, Dr. King decided to march and go to jail. He was placed in solitary confinement. From Birmingham jail, Dr. King addressed his response for those who criticized his direct

Montgomery’s group of civil rights advocates decided to dispute racial segregation on city buses after the arrest of Rosa Parks whom refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. The advocated created the Montgomery Improvement Association in order to boycott the transit system and King was chose as their leader. During his first speech king stated: “We have no alternative but to protest. For many years, we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.” On December 21st of 1956, the United States Supreme Court declared segregation on buses as unconstitutional and which allowed African Americans the same equality of Caucasians as they rode the bus. During this time, King’s was arrested, his home was dynamited and family was threatened but he still persevered and never gave in to using violence to demand what was right.

King believed in peaceful protest and said that peace is the only weapon they have. For example it started with his peaceful boycott on all Montgomery public transportation in 1955-1956 .Which proved to be successful considering blacks made up the majority of the transits systems paying customers. This protest paved the way for the Birmingham Campaign in 1963 which was a strategic plan created by Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. These throughout protest included boycotting businesses that only hired whites or that had segregated facilities. King proved to others around him that this cause they were fighting for was serious and that he would do whatever it took to achieve equality. Dr. King became known for his concern to make people equal and to ensure that everyone is safe and

In Birmingham, Ala., in the spring of 1963, King's campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and segregated hiring practices drew nationwide attention when police turned attacks dogs and fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators. King was jailed along with

In April and May of 1963, Birmingham, Alabama was a focal point for the civil rights movement. Birmingham was home to one of the most violent cells of the KKK and violence against black people was so commonplace (especially in the form of explosives) that it was referred to as “Bombingham.” It was these conditions that lead Martin Luther King to arrive and organize a series of non-violent protests in the city. These protests were relatively low key and weren’t very well attended. This was due to the fact that political rivalries between King’s organization, the SCLC, and other civil right’s organizations like CORE and the NAACP. However, the Birmingham protests soon became headlines due to the response of the city’s police

Dr. King was looking for support from members of society in order to create an effective change in society’s ethics. Moreover, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s large audience and public movement used nonviolent tactics, such as sit-ins, marches, and freedom rides to put the Civil Rights Movement in action. Before directly acting against the law, Dr. King had used other means to try to obtain justice for all; he used the four basic steps of a nonviolent campaign to decide how he would approach this cultural issue of racism: determination of whether injustices exist, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action (King 1). After the first three steps of his nonviolent campaign proved to be ineffective, he decided to seek direct action through a large demonstration of civil disobedience. Dr. King had a tremendous impact on the segregation issue in not just Birmingham, but the entire country, by leading the Civil Rights Movement, which eventually helped influence anti-segregation legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that affected a massive population of the entire country. Although Dr. King’s journey ended in his assassination, his relentless passion for equal rights was empowering to many and helped to create a more just society.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) mobilized students to protest about the disenfranchisement and segregation plaguing their city, they organized marches, sit-ins and boycotts, however these protests did not get much support from other civil rights leaders as they saw SNCC as troublemakers. It wasn’t until December 1961 that Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) became involved. The authorities in Albany decided that there were to be no ‘Martyrs’ to the cause, the police reacted calmly and without violence, protesters were arrested and released, there was no media attention, no national outcry with is ultimately why the Albany movement failed, the protesters failed to get the nation on their side. Another problem was the different civil rights organization such as SNCC and the SCLC failed to co-operate. This was a significant cause to the Birmingham movement because if Albany had not happened the way it did, then Martin Luther King Jr may have never gone to

King Jr. continued to endure the hardships, he would soon find out that he would be rewarded for his perseverance, when society was soon affected in a positive way. During the protests police ordered violent acts to stop the protesters and many protesters were jailed. The violent police acts were shown on television. The actions taken horrified many Americans (Marazani 3). Since the unjust acts were finally being televised, citizens of the United States, were now actually seeing and realizing the cruel actions that were being taken against protesters, by American officers. Now that America was finally realizing the harsh acts against African American protestors, Dr. King Jr’s goal of ending segregation was almost accomplished by making the problem known throughout America. Since all of America now knew about the brutality that police were enforcing against African Americans, there was an outrage and an agreement was reached and employers agreed to desegregate public places, and employ African Americans (Birmingham 3). Therefore the demonstrations finally came to an end now that Dr King Jr’s goal had finally been achieved. Dr. King Jr. and the protests had successfully desegregated the city of Birmingham, as well as achieving rights of equality for African Americans. However this would not have been possible without the Letters from the Birmingham

Until 1955 the civil rights movement in the country had focused on the courts: while the NAACP is subject to registration through its offices in the south and protested discrimination (Documents in US History III, Pg. 3) its efforts are concerned with the frequency of coordination and local authorities used to harass locals and their activist members. After Brown's

Kennedy was some what involved and African Americans and city council at that time was involved.It was one of the biggest cries for change at that time.The people involved started of peaceful and escalated to becoming violent. In the end victory happened as" The Birmingham Campaign ended with a victory in May of 1963 when local officials agreed to remove "White Only" and "Black Only" signs from restrooms and drinking fountains in downtown Birmingham; desegregate lunch counters; deploy a "Negro job improvement plan"; release jailed demonstrators; and create a biracial committee to monitor the

The turning point in King’s career came in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. The SCLC launched a major demonstration to protest anti-Black attitudes in the South. Confrontations ensued between unarmed Black demonstrators and Birmingham police and firemen who used clubs, attack dogs, and fire hoses as a show of unnecessary force to quell the crowd. The publication of this demonstration and the incidents that ensued had profound effects across the country. It sparked protests across the country and prompted President John F. Kennedy to push for passage of new civil rights legislation.

The Birmingham campaign was a movement organized by King Martin Luther in the spring of 1963 to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. In the early 1960s, Birmingham was a very segregated city. This meant that black and white people were kept separated. They had different schools, restaurants, water fountains and even different place to stay. There were laws that allowed and enforced segregation called Jim Crow Laws. The movement which began in April, utilized massive direct action to attack Birmingham’s strongly engrained system of segregation. The protests were co-named “Project C”. The “C” stood for “confrontation”. The protests were non violent and included boycotting downtown stores, sit-ins, marches. The organizers thought that if enough people protested, then the local government would be forced to confront them and this would make national news gaining them support the federal government and the rest of the country. This project C brought national attention to the inequality of America’s economic, legal and social system- attention that led to the civil rights act of 1964.

The media played a huge part in the success of the Birmingham campaign in 1963. For the first time the press lent a sympathetic view of the events as they occurred that day. Previous civil rights protest in Alabama had been unsuccessful. However, on May 3, 1963 this would all change. The media help was able to show the world the atrocities and racial hatred and intolerance that still existed in the South.