Skip to content Skip to navigation

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

Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146
P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | kinginstitute@stanford.edu | Campus Map

The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at licensing@i-p-m.com or 404 526-8968.