Photos Of Birmingham In 1963
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(Gallery by The Birmingham News)
In a recent conversation with a long-time friend, I was asked if Dr. King could have written his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” from anywhere other than Birmingham in April 1963. It didn’t take me long to form an opinion based on my own experiences and empirical evidence.
Before I delve into this discussion, there are some things about me that you should know. First, I was reared in historic Selma, Alabama, in the Alabama Black Belt, a city with a sordid history of recalcitrant anti-black racism, gerrymandering and all other forms of good old boy politics. Second, I attended college at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and, upon graduation, my first job was as an education intern with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
But before you shape your opinions of me, I think that it is important for you to know that I earned a Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./African American History from the University of Illinois and am currently a professor at Georgia State University. Not only do I teach history and African American Studies, I am a serious researcher in the field.
It is not by happenstance that I chose a profession that would allow me to grapple with and reconcile social issues that confronted me and people who look like me. My orientation to the world pushed me in a direction that gave me the heart to study people as a teacher and researcher.
Now that I have given full disclosure, let’s get to the subject at hand. Could Dr. King have written his letter from anywhere other than Birmingham April 1963? The answer is a resounding NO!! Birmingham was the perfect storm. This argument is so simple that I’ve written a haiku to sum it up:
and Connor, Americans
may still be unfree
For a comprehensive answer, I must provide context for newer interpretations of civil rights as seen by historians. Based on evidence, the movement started long before 1954 and extends long after 1965; women and grassroots organizers had more on-the-ground impact on the movement than charismatic leaders; the movement was international; and civil rights activity in the American South in general and Birmingham in particular deserves considerable research and attention. But there are two key points for its success: the international component of the movement and the necessity of Birmingham.
Maurice J. Hobson, Ph.D., is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is an assistant professor of African American Studies and History at Georgia State University.
During his seminary and doctoral studies, the works of philosophers Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi inspired King. Both King and Gandhi appropriated Tolstoy’s work and employed the Satyagraha, a philosophy loosely translated as nonviolent resistance. Seeing similarities with oppression, citizens of white supremacists’ strongholds utilized non-violent resistance toward racist governments, mainly South Africa and the United States, the only two nations with state-supported systems of apartheid.
The common thread between India and South Africa was European colonization, while for the U.S., white supremacy. In all three, it was clear that white oppression was prevalent and through this we understand the movement as an international one where the common denominator was oppressed people fighting for dignity and human rights.
After the Albany, Georgia, campaign of 1961 failed to provide international media outlets with police brutality and backlash anticipated by protesters, Birmingham became a point of interest to movement organizers. The city’s steel industry was its crown jewel, but job opportunities for blacks were nil to none. Black Birmingham’s unemployment rate was 2.5 times that of white Birmingham.
Bombings by Klansmen earned the city the moniker “Bombingham.” The socioeconomic conditions then made Birmingham partially ripe for protest. Conversely, the true catalyst making Birmingham suitable for a showdown with the movement was Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, who served as Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety and oversaw the city’s fire department and police force.
When civil rights activity came to Birmingham in 1962-63 using nonviolent tactics, Connor showed reckless force to keep the city segregated, complying with movement organizers’ wishes.
In April 1963, Connor acquired an injunction that prohibited protest by “outside agitators.” When King arrived in Birmingham, he was arrested and jailed on Good Friday. In an open letter on that same day, eight white Birmingham clergymen admonished King for fostering civil disobedience in the city and suggested that equality for blacks should be fought for solely in U.S. courtrooms, not in the streets. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was an open letter response to these ministers’ rebuke.
King knew just how racist Birmingham’s city administration was and that Connor would react in grand fashion ignorance. To expose Connor’s ruthlessness, the most non-threatening of protesters, Birmingham’s black schoolchildren, were commissioned and on May 2, 1963, more than 1,000 children skipped school and took to the streets protesting, singing and chanting. Connor, of course, met these children with brute force using police dogs and fire hoses. The children were arrested, beaten, bitten by dogs, and blistered by high-pressure fire hoses and the international media recorded all of it and showed it to the world.
Through Birmingham and during the Cold War period, the world bore witness to U.S. support of second-class citizenship as it championed democracy around the world. Cold War rivals, such as the Soviets, used Birmingham to show American Democracy as a sham. This, in turn, pressured the Kennedy administration to assuage discrimination and save face, hence the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
There are other areas in the U.S., such as Mississippi, that deserve considerable attention for other reasons as we discuss civil rights. But King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” along with Birmingham’s feverish pitch clearly suggest that the arrogance and ignorance of white terror as the sole response to nonviolent direct action made Birmingham in 1963 a watershed moment that forever changed American history.
Maurice J. Hobson, Ph.D., is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and grew up in Selma. He is an assistant professor of African American Studies and History at Georgia State University and lives in the Atlanta area. His work has appeared in the Journal of African American History and the History of Education Quarterly. He is the author of a forthcoming book titled "The Legend of the Black Mecca and the Making of an Olympic City: Intersections of Race, Class, Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Black Atlanta, Georgia."