Birmingham Campaign

In 1963, Southern segregationisits got a new rallying cry and the civil right movement gained a new arch villain. Birmingham was struggling to throw off its racist. This campaign was led by Martin king jr., James Bevel, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others

Alabama is one of the southern states in the United States and, as many in the south, maintained policies of prejudice and discrimination against Black Americans after the Civil War. This continued, even though there were laws against it, until the Black leaders began to join forces to try to decide on the best way to protest and object.

Jim Crow

Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Named after an insulting song lyric regarding African Americans, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to return Southern states to an antebellum class structure by marginalizing black Americans. Black communities and individuals that attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often met with violence and death.

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment freeing four million slaves.

In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal. The case, Brown v. The Board of Education, has become iconic for Americans because it marked the formal beginning of the end of segregation.

The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, following the Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rock school board pledged to voluntarily desegregate its schools. This idea was explosive for the community and, like much of the South, it was fraught with anger and bitterness.

Brown Vs. Board of Education. of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that American state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws—and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.