Essay On Why Was The Birmingham Campaign Successful

Why Was The 1963 Birmingham Campaign Successful?

The Birmingham Campaign of 1963 was a complex form of non-violent direct action protesting throughout the spring; it culminated with a series of desegregation boycotts and sit-ins of downtown stores and also a series of marches to entice mass arrest to bring about wider awareness of the unjust laws within Birmingham. The city had around a forty percent African American population, and was seen as one of the centres for white supremacy within the South, with the nickname “Bombingham”, this made it the perfect location to give the Campaign more of an opportunity to stand out. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Birmingham to support Reverend Fred Shuttleworth

King saw the importance of the federal Government when making attempting to change African American Civil Rights, since he knew only Washington had the power to change the racial problems within the South, and by imposing legislative acts on the states and Supreme Court decisions they could make changes. However, no president had directly interfered in racial problems for the previous one hundred years, this meant it was crucial for King to make a statement big enough for the Kennedy Administration to be forced to get involved. During the Campaign King got himself arrested by purposely going against the court injunction against marching, in doing so he created a stir amongst African American communities, because he was making himself a national figure for African American civil rights, his arrest would have gained substantial coverage in the news. King used his arrest and the mass arrests of African American activists to create a questioning of unjust laws in Alabama and as a result there were demonstrations all over the country doing this brought the media and reporters to see how these injustices had been played out on the African American communities in Birmingham. Whilst in prison king wrote his open ‘letter from Birmingham jail’ which he used to portray a deeper meaning of the Campaign to the world, whilst also attacking the system within Birmingham and the white religious groups of Alabama, who should ‘have been some of their strongest allies’. Although the letter was released after the height of the Campaign, the outcomes of the letter are still so powerful, because the letter attacked white moderate Americans idleness at a religious and spiritual level, Davi Johnson argues he does this ‘to arouse the nation’s moral sensibilities’ and as a result gains substantial