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On April 20, 1963,the Reverends Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were released from jail. Demonstrations were held to celebrate their release. Among the demonstrators were teenagers, some of whom were arrested and sent to the juvenile detention center. faculty.smu.edu/.../Boycott/AberKing.jpg
By the end of April, the movement had run out of adult volunteers who were willing to go to jail. Therefore, Bevel began to urge the recruitment of school children. Bevel explained the recruitment thusly, “The black community…did not have…cohesion or camaraderie. But the students, they had a community they’d been in since elementary school, so they had bonded quite well.” tworca.org/news/data/upimages/james_bevel.jpg
“Real men don’t put their children on the firing line.” Malcolm X
Although the Reverend King opposed the use of children to demonstrate, Bevel persisted, so King agreed to a student meeting at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Thursday, May 2. By Monday, April 29, hundreds of leaflets had been passed out at black high schools. Birmingham’s popular black disc jockey, Shelly “The Playboy” Stewart, aired coded instructions to his young audience on what to wear and what to take with them Shelly Stewart (green coat) with James Brown and other in the 1970s http://www.bwcitypaper.com/Articles-i-2008-09-18-224025.113122-Shelley-the-Playboy.html
On Wednesday, May 1, 1963, King, Shuttlesworth, Walker, and Abernathy attended the mass meeting at St. Paul’s AME church, where William Dothard, arrested twice during protests in the past two months, spoke about the student march. “We are going to break Birmingham wide open,” he declared. The movement was “going to give the employees of the Negro schools a holiday tomorrow because the students are going to march.” Plans were announced for the school children to meet at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, listen to Bevel, and then march into the city. Shuttlesworth reassured the parents, “Don’t worry about your children. They’re in good hands.”
Children leaving Sixteenth Street Church on May 2 to begin their march singing “We Shall Overcome.”
More than a thousand children ages six to eighteen skipped school to march to designated targets in downtown Birmingham. Three hours after the march began, 959 children had been arrested and jailed.
On May 3, even more students met at the Sixteenth Street Church to march to downtown. As the jails were full, “Bull” Connor was determined to keep the students from reaching downtown. He called in the K-9 unit and ordered firemen to turn water hoses on the marching children. : www.crmvet.org/images/imgbham.htm
Bill Hudson, an Associated Press photographer, took this picture of Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs. It was published in The New York Times on May 4, 1963.
President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy decided to intervene more forcefully in the negotiations between the white community and SCLC. They sent Burke Marshall , Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, to Birmingham. He sought compromise between the white and black communities. It was said of Marshall, “Rarely did he inject himself into settlement of the community’s problem. But he was there and the presence of the United States coupled with his quiet skill helped bring forth …its business community.”
On May 10 The Reverends Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred L. Shuttlesworth, and Ralph David Abernathy announced the negotiated truce that ended Project C.
Shuttlesworth read out the Points for Progress: • Desegregation of lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown • Creation of a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices • Arrangement for the release of jailed protestors • Establishment of regular means of communication between black and white leaders
Even though there was great exultation in the black community, there was not solidarity in the black community. Especially skeptical was Fred Shuttlesworth who questioned the good faith of the Birmingham businessmen. Additionally, parts of the white community reacted violently and continued plotting as evidenced by the bombing of the A.G. Gaston Motel and the home of the brother of the Reverend King, A. D. King.
The Reverend A. D. King’s house was bombed at 10:45 pm on May 11, 1963. At midnight the bombing of the A. G. Gaston Motel, the unofficial headquarters of the SCLC, triggered a full-scale riot.
President Kennedy’s response to these events was immediate. In a speech that was broadcast for the White House on the night of May 12, Kennedy delivered the following : “First, I am sending Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall back to Birmingham this evening to consult with local citizens. He will join Assistant Deputy Attorney General Joseph F. Dolan and other Justice Department officials who were sent to Birmingham this morning. Two, I have instructed Secretary of Defense McNamara to alert units of the Armed Forces trained in riot control and to dispatch selected units to military bases in the vicinity of Birmingham. Finally, I have directed that the necessary preliminary steps to calling the Alabama National Guard into Federal Service be taken now so that units of the Guard will be promptly available should their services be required.”
The jubilation of spring will continue to fade as violence plagues the summer and fall of 1963.
Bibliography Lisa Cozzens, "Birmingham." Civil Rights Movement 1955-1965. 20/06/1998. Web. 21 Sep 2009. <http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-5565/birming.html>. "Alabama Department of Archives and History Digital Collections." Birmingham. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Web. 22 Sep 2009. <http://216.226.178.196/>. "Fred Lee Shuttlesworth." Encyclopedia of Alabama. 09/03/2007. Web. 21 Sep 2009. <http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/ "Multiple Prints and Photographs Collection." Library of Congress. Web. 22 Sep 2009. <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query>. John Woolley, Gerhard Peters. "John F. Kennedy." The American Presidency Project. University of California, Web. 28 Sep 2009. <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9206>.
