By Patrick N. Allitt, Emory University
One of the most memorable campaigns of the entire Civil Rights movement was in Birmingham, Alabama, at Easter time in 1963. This is because the Commissioner of Public Safety, in Birmingham was a man named, Bull Connor, a racist segregationist die-hard.
Bull Connor: Taking the Bait
Martin Luther King, Jr. was confident that Connor would overreact, that he’d react violently, and in doing so put himself on the worst possible moral footing, and put the demonstrators on the best possible moral ground.
What Martin Luther King, Jr. had predicted, is exactly what happened. It was in Birmingham that Bull Connor used attack dogs and fire hoses to attack the demonstrators. Of course, it was both bad news and good news. It’s bad news in the sense that it led to massive arrests, and it was very painful to be attacked in this way, but it was good news in the sense that it got TV news, and an enormous nationwide reaction in favor of the desegregationists.
King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’
It was while he was in prison himself, arrested by Bull Connor’s men, that King wrote the ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, which has since become one of the great classic statements of the Civil Rights movement. He argued that these events in Birmingham were not only of parochial interest. One of the things that King was so good at was, to say, that, though they were in a shabby part of a little southern town and it might look as though it was just a backwater, but wasn’t. It had got global implications.
King quoted from Jesus, and Saint Paul, and Saint Augustine, and Socrates, and numerous theologians to show that issues of absolutely the first importance were at stake in Birmingham.
This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
The Birmingham Bombings
Later that year, in 1963, segregationists attacked some Birmingham churches with bombs. In one particularly horrible attack, four young girls in Sunday school classes were killed in the explosions. These Birmingham bombings finally galvanized the Kennedy administration into action.
The Attorney General was Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, and he realized that after an outrage of this magnitude, it was no longer possible for the Justice Department to drag its feet, as it had been doing to some extent.
Discrediting States’ Rights
He also recognized that now, the philosophy of states’ rights was completely discredited. After all, in itself there may be nothing wrong with states’ rights, but the degree to which the philosophy had been used to justify racial segregation had progressively discredited it.
Thus, it was harder and harder for anyone to say, that, they were genuinely interested in the separation of powers, because it had so transparently become a shelter behind which segregationists could rest.
‘I Have a Dream’
In August 1963, King made the electrifying speech, the March on Washington, the, ‘I Have a Dream’, speech, which is perhaps his single most famous statement, a beautiful blending of biblical passages from the book of Isaiah, with the words of the song ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’.
It, again, made the case that the Bible and American national tradition and the aspirations of the African American people all harmonize in their aspirations for freedom. The next year, in 1964, he was given the Nobel Peace Prize, and this made him a world-famous figure.
A Poor Image in the World
All through the Civil Rights movement, Soviet newspapers regularly had, as their headlines, descriptions of whites attacking blacks in the American South.
The civil rights confrontations provided a great propaganda opportunity to the Soviet Union, as America could openly be criticized. The Americans claiming to be on the side of freedom were horrendously mistreating its own citizens.
Losing Trust?
This was also a period where, very rapidly, the European powers were decolonizing Africa. The British Empire in Africa was completely dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s, and both the Americans and the Russians were hoping to get the newly independent African nations on their side. It was going to be very hard to persuade new, self-governing black African nations to join America if the African American people themselves were clearly being victimized at home.
Thus, in other words, the government began to realize what was going on at the moment was very costly in terms of the Cold War propaganda war, in addition to all the other domestic considerations.
Common Questions about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Birmingham Bombings
In 1963, segregationists attacked some Birmingham churches with bombs. In one particularly horrible attack, four young girls in Sunday school classes were killed in the explosions. These Birmingham bombings finally galvanized the Kennedy administration into action.
In August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., made the electrifying speech, the March on Washington, the, ‘I Have a Dream’, speech, which is perhaps his single most famous statement, a beautiful blending of biblical passages from the book of Isaiah, with the words of the song ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’.
The British Empire in Africa was completely dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s, and both the Americans and the Russians were hoping to get the newly independent African nations on their side.
