page_title: Civil Rights Movement
section_title: Birmingham Campaign (1963)
hierarchical_section_title: Civil Rights Movement / Important events / Birmingham Campaign (1963)
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Eugene "Bull" Connor from the 1960 Annual Report published by the Birmingham Police Department
context_page_description: The Civil Rights Movement was a social movement in the United States that tried to gain equal rights for African Americans. The movement is famous for using non-violent protests and civil disobedience. Activists used strategies like boycotts, sit-ins, and protest marches. Sometimes police or racist white people would attack them, but the activists never fought back.
  However, the Civil Rights Movement was made up of many different people and groups. Not everyone believed the same things. For example, the Black Power movement believed black people should demand their civil rights and force white leaders to give them those rights.
  The Civil Rights Movement was also made of people of different races and religions. The Movement's leaders and most of its activists were African-American. However, the Movement got political and financial support from labor unions, religious groups, and some white politicians, like Lyndon B. Johnson. Activists of all races came to join African-Americans in marches, sit-ins, and protests.
  The Civil Rights Movement was very successful. It helped to get five federal laws and two amendments to the Constitution passed.
context_section_description: In 1963, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) started a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. Its goals were to de-segregate the stores in downtown Birmingham; make hiring fair; and create a committee, including blacks and whites, that would make a plan for de-segregating Birmingham's schools. Martin Luther King described Birmingham as "probably the most [completely] segregated city in the United States."
  Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety was Eugene "Bull" Connor. (A Commissioner of Public Safety is in charge of the police and fire department, and deals with emergencies that could be dangerous to people in the city.) Connor was very much against integration. He often let the police, Ku Klux Klan, and racist white people attack civil rights activists. He promised that blacks and whites would never be integrated in Birmingham.
  The activists used a few different non-violent ways of protesting, including sit-ins, "kneel-ins" at local churches, and marches.p. 218 However, the city got a court order saying all protests like this were illegal. The activists knew this was illegal, and in an act of civil disobedience, they refused to follow the court order.p. 108 The protesters, including Martin Luther King, were arrested.
  While in jail, King was held in solitary confinement. While there, he wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He was let go after about a week.
caption: "Bull" Connor often allowed civil rights activists to be attacked
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