Civil rights movement

=== Birmingham campaign, 1963 ===
{{Main|Birmingham campaign}}

The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director [[Wyatt Tee Walker]] carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goal{{mdash}}the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany.

The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular [[Bull Connor|Eugene "Bull" Connor]], the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office.

The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an [[injunction]] barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for [[mass arrest]]s of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham The Birmingham Campaign] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615060449/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham |date=June 15, 2009 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

[[File:Recreation of Martin Luther King's Cell in Birmingham Jail - National Civil Rights Museum - Downtown Memphis - Tennessee - USA.jpg|thumb|left|Recreation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s cell in Birmingham Jail at the [[National Civil Rights Museum]]]]
While in jail, King wrote his famous "[[Letter from Birmingham Jail]]"<ref>[http://www.stanford.edu/group/King//popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf Letter from a Birmingham Jail] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080407103314/http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030404084236/http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf |archive-date=2003-04-04 |url-status=live |date=April 7, 2008 }} ~ King Research & Education Institute at Stanford Univ.</ref> on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.<ref>Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) ''Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"''. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. {{ISBN|0-8071-2655-1}}</ref> Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. [[Walter Reuther]], president of the [[United Auto Workers]], arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hoover.org/research/great-society-new-history-amity-shlaes-0|title=The Great Society: A New History with Amity Shlaes|website=Hoover Institution|language=en|access-date=April 29, 2020}}</ref> King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child and was released early on April 19.

The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. [[James Bevel]], SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the [[Children's Crusade (1963)|Children's Crusade]], more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail. In this first encounter, the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren.<ref>{{cite news|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/02/20/children-have-changed-america-before-braving-fire-hoses-and-police-dogs-for-civil-rights/|title=Children have changed America before, braving fire hoses and police dogs for civil rights|date=March 23, 2018}}</ref>

Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders.

[[File:Bomb wreckage near Gaston Motel (14 May 1963).JPG|thumb|right|alt=A black and white photograph of a building in ruins next to an intact wall|Wreckage at the Gaston Motel following the [[Birmingham crisis|bomb explosion]] on May 11, 1963]]
Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement{{mdash}}[[Fred Shuttlesworth]] was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They [[Birmingham riot of 1963#Gaston Motel|bombed the Gaston Motel]], which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, [[Birmingham crisis|thousands of blacks rioted]], burning numerous buildings and one of them stabbed and wounded a police officer.<ref>[http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9605/15/ Freedom-Now" ''Time'', May 17, 1963] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150309014723/http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9605/15/ |date=March 9, 2015 }}; Glenn T. Eskew, ''But for Birmingham: The Local and National Struggles in the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 301.</ref>

[[File:Wallace at University of Alabama edit2.jpg|thumb|Alabama governor [[George Wallace]] [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|tried to block desegregation]] at the [[University of Alabama]] and is confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General [[Nicholas Katzenbach]] in 1963.]]

Kennedy prepared to federalize the [[Alabama National Guard]] if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church]] in Birmingham, killing four young girls.