Birmingham 1963: The Easter Boycott, Bull Connor and the Children's Crusade

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In 1963 Birmingham, Alabama barred Black residents from jobs as police officers, clerks or cashiers, and 50 unsolved racial bombings between 1945 and 1962 earned it the name Bombingham, with one neighborhood called Dynamite Hill. With the NAACP banned in Alabama, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, whose petition the mayor said he had thrown in the garbage, invited Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC. Learning from the stalled Albany movement, Wyatt T. Walker built Project C, for confrontation, around the downtown stores in the weeks before Easter, demanding integrated fitting rooms, lunch counters and hiring. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene Bull Connor stayed in office despite losing the mayoral race to Albert Boutwell, leaving the city with two competing governments.

An April 10 injunction and bail raised from $200 to $1,500 drained the SCLC, and King was jailed on Good Friday. With adults afraid of losing jobs, James Bevel recruited students, and radio station WENN told them to bring a toothbrush to the party. On May 2 more than 600 young people marched, and on May 3 Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on them, drawing criticism of the tactic from Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy. By May 7 decoy groups and false fire alarms helped thousands flood downtown, and between May 8 and 10 business leaders agreed to desegregate within 90 days. Bombings followed, including the September attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls.

• Walker paced out walking times from the 16th Street Baptist Church to the target stores.
• Boycott enforcers sometimes confiscated and destroyed goods that Black shoppers had bought from targeted stores.
• The hoses were industrial monitor guns strong enough to peel bark from trees.
• Jails overflowed so badly that detainees were held in an open-air stockade at the state fairgrounds.
• The A.G. Gaston Motel and the home of King's brother were bombed right after the agreement was announced.