29 December 2008
“We Have a Movement”
Bull Connor’s violent response horrifies the nation
This article is excerpted from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 3.6 MB).
Because the Birmingham campaign required their leadership, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy posted bond after eight days in jail. They turned to an idea credited to the Reverend James Bevel, a Nashville sit-in and Freedom Ride veteran recruited by King to serve as Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s director of direct action and nonviolent education. Knowing that few black families could afford to have their primary wage earner serve jail time, Bevel began to organize the city’s young African Americans. College students, secondary schoolers, and even elementary school pupils were instructed in the principles of nonviolence. They prepared to march downtown, there to enter whites-only lunch counters, use the whites-only drinking fountains, study in the whites-only libraries, pray in the whites-only churches. In some denominations, at least, white churches welcomed the young blacks.
The decision to use children was a controversial one. The SCLC’s executive director, the Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker, defended it on the grounds that “Negro children will get a better education in five days in jail than in five months in a segregated school.” In his Autobiography, King related the case of a black teenager who decided to march in the face of his father’s objections:
“Daddy,” the boy said, “I don’t want to disobey you, but I have made my pledge. If you try to keep me home, I will sneak off. If you think I deserve to be punished for that, I’ll just have to take the punishment. For, you see, I’m not doing this only because I want to be free. I’m doing it also because I want freedom for you and Mama, and I want it to come before you die.”
That father thought again, and gave his son his blessing.
On May 2, 1963, hundreds of young African Americans set out, linked by walkie-talkie, singing “We Shall Overcome.” Hundreds were arrested, swelling the Birmingham jail well beyond its capacity. Perhaps most importantly, they stretched Bull Connor’s temper to its breaking point.
On May 3, Connor determined to halt the demonstrations by force. Fire hoses set to full pressure — enough to peel bark from a tree — knocked protestors off their feet and rolled them down the asphalt streets. At the police chief’s order, police dogs were used to disperse the crowds, and several demonstrators were bitten.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist James Foreman was at SCLC headquarters when the news came. He reported that the leaders there were “jumping up and down, elated. … They said over and over again, ‘We’ve got a movement. We’ve got a movement. We had some police brutality.’ ” Foreman thought this “very cold, cruel, and calculating,” but, as the historian C. Vann Woodward concluded: “The more seasoned campaigners had learned the price and worth of photographic opportunities.”
The young demonstrators returned each day that week, as did the hoses and the dogs. The resulting photographs, video, and written accounts dominated the news in the United States and in much of the world. Faced with the greatest provocation, most demonstrators remained nonviolent. James Bevel roamed the streets, shouting through a bullhorn: “If you’re not going to demonstrate in a nonviolent way, then leave.” By May 6, Bull Connor was housing thousands of child prisoners at the state fairgrounds.
A New York Times editorial expressed the feeling of growing numbers of Americans:
No American schooled in respect for human dignity can read without shame of the barbarities committed by Alabama police authorities against Negro and white demonstrators for civil rights. The use of police dogs and high-pressure fire hose to subdue schoolchildren in Birmingham is a national disgrace. The herding of hundreds of teenagers and many not yet in their teens into jails and detention homes for demanding their birthright of freedom makes a mockery of legal process.
In Washington, D.C., one very important reader shared this sentiment. As King biographer Marshall Frady relates:
One news photo of a policeman clutching the shirtfront of a black youth with one hand while his other held the leash of a dog swirling at the youth’s midsection happened to pass under the eyes of the president in the Oval Office, and he told a group of visitors that day, “It makes me sick.”
On May 7, Fred Shuttlesworth was injured by a fire hose stream that hurled him against the side of his church. Arriving a few minutes later, Bull Connor declared: “I’m sorry I missed it. … I wish they’d carried him away in a hearse.”
By May 9, Birmingham’s business leaders had had enough. They negotiated an agreement with King and Shuttlesworth. Birmingham businesses would desegregate their lunch counters, restrooms, and drinking fountains. They would hire and promote black employees. The jailed protestors would be freed, and charges dropped. Bull Connor called it “the worst day of my life.”
The triumph of the Birmingham movement reflected the bravery and discipline of the African-American protestors. It spoke to the inspiring and hard-headed leadership of men like Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, James Bevel, and others. It forced Americans to confront squarely — in their newspapers and on their television screens — the reality of Jim Crow brutality. And it reflected an idealism that had survived both slavery and segregation, and also an impatience over promises long deferred. On May 8, a Birmingham juvenile court judge conducted a hearing on the case of a 15-year-old boy arrested during the May 3 demonstrations:
Judge: I often think of what the Founding Fathers said: “There is no freedom without restraint.” Now I want you to go home and go back to school. Will you do that?
Boy: Can I say something?
Judge: Anything you like.
Boy: Well, you can say that because you’ve got your freedom. The Constitution says we’re all equal, but Negroes aren’t equal.
Judge: But you people have made great gains and they still are. It takes time.
Boy: We’ve been waiting over 100 years.
