Sixty Years Later: Birmingham and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
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The following is a speech I delivered at the closing reception for an exhibition of photographer Bud Lee’s work at the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum.
You can listen to this piece on the Lillian E. Smith Center’s podcast Dope with Lime.
We’ve all seen images of Walter Gadsen, a Parker High School student in Birmingham, getting attacked by dogs as Birmingham police officers hold the leashes. We’ve all seen images of students in Birmingham bracing themselves against walls as Birmingham emergency personnel blast them with high-pressure fire hoses. Those images are from the Birmingham Campaign, which took place sixty years ago in April and May of 1963. The campaign originated in 1962 when students at area colleges proposed staggered boycotts of businesses, similar to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. On April 3, individuals participated in nonviolent protests such as sit-ins at segregated public buildings, restaurants, churches, and more. Seven days later, Bull Connor, Birmingham’s public safety commissioner, issued an injunction that barred protests and raised bail bonds from $200 to $1,500. The jails began to fill up, and on April 12, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested.
During his time in the jail, King penned his famous “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” on scraps of paper. In his open letter, King responded to eight white “liberal” clergymen in Alabama who called on King to rely on the legal system and gradual progress instead of nonviolent protests because the latter, they argued, would lead to civil unrest. In his letter, King wrote Birmingham “is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.” While 60% of the population was white and 40% was Black, the police force did not have any Black officers, and King stated, “Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country,” and the legal system treated Black citizens unjustly. King responds to the clergymen who wanted him to work within the legal system, and King tells them that the…
