Birmingham+Campaign+1963-1964

In April 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Civil Righst in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. The campaign was originally scheduled to begin in early March 1963, but was postponed until April 2nd when Alber Boutwell defeated Birmingham’s segregationist commissioner of public safety, Eugine Connor, in a run-off mayoral election. On April 3rd, the desegregation campaign began with a series of mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. Dr. King spoke to black citizens about nonviolent methods and extended appeals for volunteers at the end of the mass meetings. The number of volunteers increased daily, and actions soon expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to register voters. Hundreds were arrested. After the Alabama state government declared against the protests, Dr. King declared the ruling unconstitutional and unjust. He continued wth his protests and arrests were made. Protests still continued, and violence came into order, though the protests made such a huge impact no matter what happened.