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April 1963

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Achievement · politics
Birmingham Campaign Forces Desegregation Negotiations

SCLC's Project C deployed nonviolent direct action including children's marches against Bull Connor's fire hoses and police dogs. The campaign's images shocked the nation, prompted the Kennedy administration to propose civil rights legislation, and is widely seen as the turning point that made the Civil Rights Act possible.

Events

  1. April 3, 1963
    Birmingham Campaign Forces Desegregation Negotiations

    SCLC's Project C deployed nonviolent direct action including children's marches against Bull Connor's fire hoses and police dogs. The campaign's images shocked the nation, prompted the Kennedy administration to propose civil rights legislation, and is widely seen as the turning point that made the Civil Rights Act possible.

  2. April 16, 1963
    Martin Luther King Jr. writes 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'

    While imprisoned for leading nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his masterful 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' in the margins of newspapers, articulating the moral urgency of civil disobedience and directly rebuking white moderates who urged patience. The letter became one of the most important documents in American history and defined the moral philosophy of the civil rights movement.