As an outgrowth of the Montgomery bus boycott, protest movements emerged in numerous cities throughout the South. The 1963 campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, the largest industrial city in the South, generated national publicity and federal action due to the particularly violent response of segregationists. According to Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) nonviolent direct action could not have been staged in a more appropriate place, in the "belly of the beast." Along with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the summer of 1963, the Birmingham campaign created an urgency that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In the spring of 1956, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth organized the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), an organization focused on direct action and committed to ending segregation in Birmingham. In May 1962, SCLC leaders, including King, joined Shuttlesworth and the ACMHR in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system. Like Shuttlesworth, they believed that while a campaign in Birmingham would surely be the toughest fight of the civil rights movement to date, if successful, it would have implications for segregation all over the nation. "Our goal in Birmingham was larger than ending segregation in one Southern city," SNCC chairman John Lewis noted. "It was our hope that our efforts in Birmingham would dramatize the fight and determination of African-American citizens in the Southern states and that we would force the Kennedy administration to draft and push through Congress a comprehensive Civil Rights Act, outlawing segregation and racial discrimination in public accommodations, employment and education."
The campaign's strategy was to put economic pressure on Birmingham's merchants, so organizers scheduled the protests to begin around the Easter season, the second biggest shopping period of the year. However, a mayoral election was to be held in Birmingham on 5 March. All the leading candidates were segregationists, but candidate Eugene "Bull" Connor, also Birmingham's commissioner of public safety, was considered much more militant. Because SCLC did not want to be used as a political tool to drive white voters to Connor, they postponed the campaign until two weeks after the election. The close election resulted in a runoff on 2 April 1963 in which Albert Boutwell defeated Connor. Despite the results of the runoff, the city commissioners, including Connor, refused to vacate their city hall offices, arguing that they could not be legally removed from office until 1965. When SCLC finally launched the campaign in early April, Birmingham was operating under two governments.
The campaign began with a series of mass meetings and direct actions. King spoke on the philosophy of nonviolence and its methods, and at the end of the meetings, extended an appeal to volunteers to serve in the nonviolent resistance. SCLC actions began with lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. With the number of volunteers increasing daily, actions soon expanded to knee-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to mark the opening of a voter registration drive.
On 10 April, the city government obtained a court injunction directing an end to all protests. King and the SCLC decided that the time had come to counter the city's legal maneuvering with action; and after two days of heavy debate, they decided to disobey the court order. King declared, "We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process."
SCLC’s plans to submit to arrests were threatened, however, by insufficient funds to cover bail expenses. SCLC had used up all of the money they had available for cash bonds and had an ongoing responsibility to demonstrators already arrested and jailed. Fifty more demonstrators were scheduled to be arrested with Ralph Abernathy and King, and the SCLC could not guarantee their eventual release. King contemplated whether he should go to jail because, given the lack of funds, his services as a fundraiser were so desperately needed. But he worried that his failure to submit to arrests would undermine the credibility of the movement, criticism he had faced during the Albany Movement. After some thought, King concluded that he had to be willing to go to jail in Birmingham. "Friends," King said, "I've made my decision. I have to make a faith act. I don't know what will happen or what the outcome will be. I don't know where the money will come from."
On 12 April, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the state circuit court injunction against protests. He was kept in solitary confinement and was al lowed minimal direct contact. It was at this time that King penned his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail on the margins of the Birmingham News.
King's request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied. With King in solitary confinement, Coretta feared for his safety. Her telephone conversations with Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John Kennedy led to Birmingham officials permitting King to call home. While King remained in jail, Harry Belafonte helped raise the necessary funds to continue the campaign, donating $50,000 to the movement. King was released on 19 April 1963.
In order to maintain pressure, SCLC organizers decided to appeal to high school students for the next wave of demonstrations. They hoped such dramatic action would elicit national attention and secure federal civil rights legislation. They viewed high school students as an untapped source of freedom fighters who did not have the jobs and responsibilities of older activists.
On 2 May 1963, more than a thousand black youth descended upon Birmingham. Close to 900 students were arrested, but a reserve army of nearly 2500 demonstrated the following day. Bull Connor, who had up until this point "restrained" from violence against protesters, ordered firemen to use their hoses on the protesters and on lookers. As the youth fled from the power of the hoses, Connor directed officers and their dogs to pursue them. John Lewis noted the power of this incident: "We didn't fully comprehend at first what was happening. We were witnessing police violence and brutality Birmingham-style: unfortunately for Bull Connor, so was the rest of the world." As the clashes between nonviolent protesters and police made headlines across the country—with pictures of policemen bending over women with raised clubs, children marching up to the aggressive police dogs, and pressure hoses sweeping bodies into the streets—the movement reached a new level of visibility.
At the same time, SCLC leaders became aware that the white business structure was weakening under the adverse publicity, the pressure of the boycott, and the unexpected fall-off of white business. While the pressure on Birmingham's business community was increasing, some business owners were still reluctant to negotiate with SCLC leadership. However, with national pressure on the White House mounting, the administration intervened. President Kennedy sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to facilitate negotiations between the SCLC and representatives of Birmingham's business community. On Friday, 10 May, an agreement between the Senior Citizens Council and SCLC leadership was announced. It contained pledges for the desegregation of public accommodations, a committee to ensure nondiscriminatory hiring practices in Birmingham, cooperation in releasing jailed protesters, and public communications between black and white leaders to prevent further demonstrations.
Announcement of the agreement was met with violent retaliation. The home of the Reverend A. D. King, Martin Luther King's brother, was bombed; and a bomb was planted near the Gaston Motel, where King and SCLC leaders were staying. President Kennedy responded by ordering 3,000 federal troops into position near Birmingham and made preparations to federalize the Alabama National Guard. Four months later, on 15 September, Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls. King delivered the eulogy at the funerals of Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley.
The momentum generated by the Birmingham struggle culminated on 28 August 1963 when the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom attracted more than 200,000 demonstrators to the Lincoln Memorial. Organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, the march was supported by all major civil rights organizations as well as many labor and religious groups. It was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. The Birmingham Campaign and the March on Washington paved the way for the passage of the most significant civil rights legislation of the 1960s: the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).