King: A Biography

7. Birmingham—Nonviolence in Black, Violence in White

7 Birmingham-Nonviolence in Black, Violence in White Our judgment of Bull Connor should not be too harsh. After all, in his way, he has done a good deal for civil rights legislation this year. JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY THERE WERE NEARLY 350,000 PEOPLE; in Birmingham, Alabama , in 1963; almost all of those who were black would have preferred to live elsewhere. The widely held notion that burgeoning commerce and industry tend to make for social as well as economic progress was wholly inapplicable to this city. "The striking thing about Birmingham," columnist James Reston wrote after a visit, "is that it seems so advanced industrially and so retarded politically." Although it is the major center for the production of iron and steel in the South, Birmingham gave the impression of a city "which had been trapped for decades in a Rip Van Winkle slumber." "It's So Nice to Have You in Birmingham" proclaim the signs of the chamber of commerce along the principal approaches to the city. The urban centers of the deep South are notorious for the unintended irony of their salutatory billboards. Philadelphia , Mississippi, site of the hideous murder of three civil rights youth volunteers in 1964, essays to befriend the traveler by proclaiming that it is "A Nice Place to Rear a Boy." The catalogue of injustices in Birmingham runs on for pages. Of the 80,000 registered voters in 1963, only 10,000 171 172 King were black. In the midst of industrial plenty, nonwhites were rigidly restricted to menial and domestic jobs. Segregation was total and the slightest betrayal of discontent with the racial order was severely, often capitally, punished. Police brutality to blacks was the custom rather than the exception, and the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor , was notoriously vigilant and cruel, though far less professional than a gauleiter. The city officials took cognizance of federal law. They closed the city's parks rather than allow blacks to sully them. Some whites and a few blacks enjoyed the opera, so the city fathers removed Birmingham from the annual circuit of the Metropolitan Opera, when the Opera adopted a policy of performing only before unsegregated audiences. Whites still sipped water from designated fountains and tried on clothing in fitting rooms interdicted to blacks. But no system can survive if its guardians relax. There were moments in 1956 and 1957 when the disease afflicting Little Rock and Montgomery gave signs of spreading to Birmingham. But it was believed that the prophylactic bombing of seventeen churches had by 1963 adequately immunized the black population from the contagion. Birmingham, the whites said, was a "good" city. A handful of blacks refused to be intimidated, however. Among them was Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a thin and intense man of medium height, well-defined features, and deep cocoa complexion. In 1963, he was forty-one years old and had spent all but three of those years in Alabama. His organization, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), had been formed in 1956 at the time of the Montgomery boycott. \Vhen the SCLC was organized, the ACMHR became one of its strongest affiliates. Its leaders were chosen from the key sectors in the black community. A. G. Gaston, the city's black millionaire, John Drew, a prosperous insurance broker, Arthur Shores, an energetic young lawyer, President Lucius Pitts of privately endowed Miles Birmingham 173 College, Reverend Edward Gardner, the organization's vicepresident , and Reverend Charles Billups partnered the development of the ACMHR with President Shuttlesworth. They worked closely, though not always smoothly, with the power· ful Baptist Ministers Conference, headed by Dr. J. L. \Vare. Despite the routine terror enforced by Commissioner Connor , the ACMHR had encouraged the cautious boycott by Miles College students of local merchants early in 1962. At its annual board meeting, held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in May, the SCLC voted to manifest support of Shuttlesworth's efforts by holding its plenary conference in Birmingham that September. The result of this announcement was a series of meetings between the Senior Citizens Committee (a white civic organization) and the leaders of the ACMHR in August . It was agreed that local merchants would remove racially offensive signs and discontinue separate drinking and lunch· counter facilities. When the SCLC convention ended, how· ever, the Senior Citizens Committee acknowledged that the agreement had been a cynical maneuver to avoid the pressure of national publicity. The signs...