Among other things, the leaders intend to pressure Birmingham’s merchants by interfering with the important shopping season surrounding Easter. to help in their efforts to desegregate “Bombingham.” In early 1963, King and the SCLC join with the ACMHR in an enormous direct action campaign to attack the city’s system of segregation. Backgroundįred Shuttlesworth, founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), Birmingham’s pre-existing local movement, after the Alabama legislature outlawed the NAACP), late in 1962 invited Martin Luther King, Jr. For a summary account of these events, view the timeline below a more detailed chronology can be found in Diane McWhorter’s excellent book on the Birmingham Campaign, Carry Me Back. Ultimately, the events that transpired in Birmingham are some of the most memorable of the entire civil rights movement. The Birmingham campaign of 1963 sought to confront Birmingham’s challenges, as activists set their sights on the widespread desegregation of Alabama’s largest city.

Few or no black citizens of Birmingham in 1960 were serving as police officers, fire fighters, bank tellers, or store clerks libraries, parks, motels, restrooms, schools–and even elevators–were segregated. One of the most racially divided cities in the United States in the 1960s, Birmingham provided civil rights activists with one of their most challenging tests.

Carry me home mcwhorter