In 1963 one city, more than any other, represented the limited nature of civil rights victories and the continued impact of segregation. Despite an active local movement, led by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and his Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and peopled by community members and students from Miles College, Birmingham was marked by a visible color line. The city’s laws were enforced by one of the most notorious segregationists in the country, Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s police commissioner, who used his considerable manpower to arrest, imprison, and intimidate activists who tested municipal segregation laws. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “[W]hile a campaign in Birmingham would surely be the toughest fight of our civil-rights careers, it could, if successful, break the back of segregation all over the nation. A victory there might well set forces in motion to change the entire course of the drive for freedom and justice.”
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Becoming Alabama:
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