SCLC PROTEST CAMPAIGNS

In the early 1960s Martin Luther King led the SCLC in a series of protest campaigns that gained national attention.

The first was in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, where the SCLC joined local demonstrations against segregated restaurants, hotels, transit, and housing. The SCLC increased the size of the demonstrations in an effort to create so much dissent and disorder that local white officials would be forced to end segregation to restore normal business relations. The strategy did not work in Albany. During months of protests, Albany's police chief jailed hundreds of demonstrators without visible police violence. Eventually the protesters' energy, and the money to bail out protesters, ran out.

The strategy did work, however, in Birmingham, Alabama, when the SCLC joined a local protest during the spring of 1963. The protest was led by Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the ministers who had worked with Martin Luther King in 1957 in organizing the SCLC. Shuttlesworth believed that the Birmingham police commissioner, Eugene "Bull" Connor, would meet protesters with violence. In May 1963 Martin Luther King and his SCLC staff escalated antisegregation marches in Birmingham by encouraging teenagers and schoolchildren to join. Hundreds of singing children filled the streets of downtown Birmingham, angering Connor, who sent police officers with attack dogs and firefighters with high-pressure water hoses against the marchers. Scenes of young protesters being attacked by dogs and pinned against buildings by torrents of water from fire hoses were shown in newspapers and on televisions around the world.

During the demonstrations, Martin Luther King was arrested and sent to jail. He wrote a letter from his jail cell to local clergymen who had criticized him for creating disorder in the city. His "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," which argued that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws, was widely read at the time and added to Martin Luther King's standing as a moral leader. National reaction to the Birmingham violence built support for the struggle for black civil rights. The demonstrations forced white leaders to negotiate an end to some forms of segregation in Birmingham. Even more important, the protests encouraged many Americans to support national legislation against segregation.