Birmingham Campaign

Introduction

In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) 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. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group’s ‘‘Birmingham Manifesto,’’ the campaign was ‘‘a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive’’ (ACMHR, 3 April 1963).

Documents

Document: Associated Press. Photo of Martin Luther King, Jr., 13 April 1963.

• Classroom Activity: Project C Strategy Committee Role Play
• Encyclopedia: Birmingham Campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy

• Document Analysis Worksheet

Document: King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," 16 April 1963.

• Classroom Activity: Letter from a Birmingham Jail
• Encyclopedia: Birmingham Campaign
• Letter from a Birmingham Jail Analysis Worksheet 1
• Letter from a Birmingham Jail Analysis Worksheet 2

Document: Carson, Clayborne (2001). The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter 19: Freedom Now.

• Classroom Activity: Transformation? Reconciliation? Does nonviolence work?
• Encyclopedia: Birmingham Campaign, Nonviolent Resistance