29 December 2008
Arrest in Birmingham
King is jailed
This article is excerpted from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 3.6 MB).
If Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett possessed the political savvy and emotional detachment to fight nonviolence with nonviolence, his Birmingham, Alabama, counterpart, Bull Connor, did not. King and the other movement leaders rightly anticipated that Connor would prove a perfect foil. King biographer Marshall Frady depicted Connor as “a bombastic segregationist of the old, unapologetically bluff sort — a podgy, strutful, middle-aged bossman in a snap-brim straw hat who … held a famously irascible temper.” Connor did not represent the views of all white Birmingham residents; a recent municipal election had produced gains for reformist candidates. But he controlled the police, and the “greeting” that the Freedom Riders had experienced in Birmingham amply illustrated what activists might expect to find there.
Albany had taught King and his SCLC team to focus on specific goals rather than a general desegregation. As King later wrote:
We concluded that in hard-core communities, a more effective battle could be waged if it was concentrated against one aspect of the evil and intricate system of segregation. We decided, therefore, to center the Birmingham struggle on the business community, for we knew that the Negro population had sufficient buying power so that its withdrawal could make the difference between profit and loss for many businesses.
On April 3, 1963, activists launched a round of lunch-counter sit-ins. A march on Birmingham’s City Hall followed on the 6th. The city’s African Americans began to boycott downtown businesses, a tactic King deemed “amazingly effective.” A number of shops swiftly removed their whites-only signs, only to be threatened by Bull Connor with the loss of their business licenses. As the numbers of volunteers grew, the Birmingham movement expanded its efforts to “kneel-ins” in local church buildings and library sit-ins. The number of arrests grew and the jails filled.
The police response remained muted to this point. The New York Times described a typical incident:
Eight Negros entered the segregated library. They strolled through three of the four floors and sat at desks reading magazines and books. The police were present but did not order them to leave. They left voluntarily after about half an hour.
About 25 whites were in the library when the Negroes entered. Some made derogatory remarks such as, “It stinks in here.” Others asked the Negroes: “Why don’t you go home?” But there were no incidents.
On April 10, Connor followed Pritchett’s example, obtaining a county court injunction barring King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and 134 other leaders from engaging in boycotts, sit-ins, picketing, and other protest activities. Any violation of the injunction would be contempt of court, punishable by more substantial jail time than a mere breach of peace.
King now faced a choice. He and Abernathy decided they would violate the injunction. King issued a brief statement:
We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic, and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process.
We do this not out of any disrespect for the law but out of the highest respect for the law. This is not an attempt to evade or defy the law or engage in chaotic anarchy. Just as in all good conscience we cannot obey unjust laws, neither can we respect the unjust use of the courts.
We believe in a system of law based on justice and morality. Out of our great love for the Constitution of the United States and our desire to purify the judicial system of the state of Alabama, we risk this critical move with an awareness of the possible consequences involved.
On Good Friday, April 12, 1963, Martin Luther King led a protest march toward downtown Birmingham. On the fifth block, King, Abernathy, and about 60 others, including a white clergyman who joined the protest, were arrested. As King was taken into custody, Connor remarked: “That’s what he came down here for, to get arrested. Now he’s got it.”
