The Colorful
Arts Society, Inc.
SummerFest 2013 Saturday, August 3, 2013
Birmingham, Alabama
Page
Name of 2013SummerFest Traveler
1
The Civil Rights Museum
Scavenger Hunt
Dear 2013 Colorful Arts Society SummerFest Traveler!
Your journey from the historic city of Atlanta, Georgia to the historic city of
Birmingham, Alabama promises to be memorable and a true walk through a tumultuous
period of time in these United States of America! This well-orchestrated journey depicts the
fact that art, music, drama, and oration were and are truly gifts of change-agentry! Even
more so… it was the known and unknown artists, musicians, dramatists, orators, financiers
and architects of the Civil Rights movement who transformed the hearts of people of all
races, creeds and levels of economics such that a “new” generation of thinking, caring and
artistic people could rise-up and bring forth an improved quality of life and life choices.
This 2013 SummerFest journey bespeaks our Nation’s Common Core national educational
Standards in the realm of the “arts”. Our 21st century students must be able to analyze how
and why individuals, events and ideas develop and interact over the course of time. In other
words, as progressive American citizens we must be able to describe the importance of
energized, responsive people, within the context of events and developments. Dr. King often
said, “Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve.” Today’s journey will focus
on the period of time between 1950-1975 ss5H8 wherein one’s change-agentry gifts were
impactful.
Page
Sincerely,
Dr. Rebecca Dashiell-Mitchell, Colorful Arts Society
Board Member, Scholarship Committee Chair [404-218.4160] rdashiellmitchell@yahoo.com
2
As you review and move through the various galleries/exhibits/halls of the Birmingham Civil
Rights Museum, just fill-in the blank spaces of this Scavenger Hunt!
What rich discussions we should all experience during and after our return to Atlanta, the
City Too Busy to Hate!
2013
The Colorful Arts Society, Inc.
Greater Metro Atlanta
P.O. Box 142863
Fayetteville, GA 30214
Board of Directors
Dr. Mona M. MacDonald, President Emerita
Mrs. Audrey Toney, President
Mr. Fredrick Wallace, Vice-President
Ms. Laura Brown, Board Member
Ms. Angelia Blackwell, Legal Advisor
Ms. Carrietta Belle Butts, Treasurer
Mr. Larry Burney, Financial Secretary
Mr. Archie Hale, Board Member
Mr. Donald Sims, Parliamentarian
Mr. Arnold Martin, Community Board of Advisors
Dr. Marty Pinkston, Recording Secretary
Dr. Rebecca Dashiell-Mitchell, Board Member
Ms. Onie Lawson, Board Member
Dr. Lakeacha Jett, Corresponding Secretary
Vacant, Resident Artist
Page
Welcome…
2013 SummerFest Traveler!
3
2013 Program Committee Members: Frederick Wallace [Chairperson], Ernestine Brown,
Gladys Crump, Carrie Dumas, *Claudia Lewis [Special Events Chairperson],
Dr. Marty Pinkston, and Michelle Thornton!
Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth
Questions for Discussion
-What was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth trying to achieve through his activism?
-What are some specific examples of Shuttlesworth's commitment to nonviolent action? How would you have
responded in his situation?
-What does a commitment to nonviolence require?
Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth was a civil rights leader from Birmingham, Alabama. Shuttlesworth grew up in a rural, black
community and was educated at Selma University and Alabama State Teachers College. He became a Baptist minister and
served a church in Selma and later in Birmingham. In 1956, he founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
(ACMHR) and the following year, along with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, organized the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also helped the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organize the
Freedom Rides, two interracial bus rides through the South that tested the enforcement of recent Supreme Court rulings.
A fearless advocate of racial equality, King called Shuttlesworth "one of the nation's most courageous freedom fighters."
Shuttlesworth was often subjected to violence as a consequence of his actions. In 1956, after the Montgomery bus boycott
and Supreme Court ruling, Shuttlesworth announced that unless the Birmingham city buses were desegregated, black
residents would begin sitting in the front of the buses on December 26. On Christmas night, a bomb blast destroyed his
home. Incredibly, Shuttlesworth emerged only slightly injured, and the demonstration took place as planned. Over the
years, he was assaulted by police dogs and knocked unconscious by a high-pressure fire hose.
In 1957, three years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were
unconstitutional; Shuttlesworth and his wife escorted their children to Phillips High School in Birmingham in an attempt to
integrate the all-white public school. A white mob that gathered beat him with brass knuckles and chains, and stabbed his
wife. Although he was nearly killed by the mob, Shuttlesworth did not strike back at his attackers, but instead moved
through the hostile crowd as best he could. At a mass meeting that evening, Shuttlesworth used the incident to teach a lesson
on nonviolence. He asked everyone who was angry about the attack to stand. Everyone stood. Then he asked everyone who
had been beaten that day to remain standing. Everyone sat down. He said, "That's strange, I was beat up and I'm not angry."
He went on to say, "You got to suffer for what you believe in… It's going to better the lives of people around you and
behind you. That's what we are fighting for…That's what the Movement is all about."
The Teachers’ Domain Civil Rights Special Collection is produced by WGBH Boston, in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Washington University in St. Louis.
Funding was provided by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the Open Society Institute. www.teachersdomain.org
Page
In 1981, he organized the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, which provides grants to help poor families in Cincinnati
become homeowners. In March 2006, at 84, Rev. Shuttlesworth retired from his pastorate of Greater New Light Missionary
Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
4
Rev. Shuttlesworth was responsible for inviting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to begin civil rights work in Birmingham,
Alabama that led to King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. The letter was a response to eight white Birmingham clergymen
who denounced King as an outsider whose work in the city was “untimely”. Over the years, Rev. Shuttlesworth was also
instrumental in organizing bus boycotts, student sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and boycotts of segregated businesses. He also
initiated lawsuits attacking segregation ordinances. In March 1965, he helped organize the march from Selma to
Montgomery to protest voting discrimination in Alabama.
SCAVENGER HUNT
PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT USE THE WALLS IN THE GALLERIES AS A HARD SURFACE FOR WRITING. YOU MAY BRING OUR OWN BOOK, CLIPBOARD, & OR
PENCIL TO USE. THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR HONORING THIS REQUEST AND HELPING TO MAINTAIN THE BIRMINGHAM CIVIL RIGHTS INSTITUTE.
Barriers Gallery
1.
________________ was a two-sport professional athlete.
2.
_________________ transportation was segregated in Birmingham.
3.
The signs of _____________ served as constant reminders of the strict separation of races
in the South.
4.
In the 1930s, black workers led efforts to form independent ______________.
5.
Beginning in the 1880s ______________ of African-Americans found work in the iron ore
mines and steel mills of Birmingham.
6.
In 1950, the average class size was ________ compared to 35 in white schools.
7.
That same year, Alabama spent __________ on each white child, but only $60 per black
pupil.
8.
The “____________ Circuit” was home to many outstanding jazz musicians; it was also a
stop on the black entertainment of Southern cities.
9.
John T. “Fess” Whatley shaped a generation of _________ musicians who played in major
U.S. bands of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.
10. Religious institutions were also the center of the community’s ____________, civic, and
even economic development.
Page
12. Although they’re painful to view, these everyday objects tell a story of how
_______________ images were distorted by whites.
5
11. Church leaders were also ____________ leaders.
13. Birmingham is a city of neighborhoods that developed around major iron and
_________________ mills and mines.
14. Adequate housing, _____________ care, and protection under the law were part of life for
most white citizens but sorely lacking for blacks.
15. Differences in income between Birmingham’s black and white citizens reflected limited
_______________ opportunities.
16. The courts offered __________ protection, allowing white juries to punish blacks, while
setting white prisoners free.
17. In 1954, The United States Supreme Court ruled segregated schools ____________.
18. Smith and ___________ Funeral Homes grew to include insurance companies, construction
firms, a business school, and Gaston Motel.
19. Caricature of African-Americans appeared on postcards, _________ tobacco tins, and toys.
Confrontation Gallery
20. In 1954, following the stunning legal victory of Brown vs. Board of Education, the fight
against _______________ gained strength.
21. From the late 1940s until the mid 1960s, nearly 50 unsolved racially directed bombings led
to the unofficial name, _______________.
Movement Gallery
22. Ku Klux Klan increased intimidation with ____________ through Birmingham’s
neighborhoods.
23. In the late 1955, a quiet courageous woman named Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a
white man on a crowded __________________ city bus.
Page
25. In early 1960, black college students were active in the civil rights movement with
________________ at local “whites only” lunch counters.
6
24. In Montgomery, segregated city buses were a constant reminder of _________.
26. Many Nashville students attended ______________ workshops for months before the first
sit-ins.
27. Legally banned, segregation on the interstate buses persisted in the _____________.
28. The trouble for Freedom Riders began outside___________, Alabama, where one bus was
forced to stop and a firebomb was thrown inside.
29. In the summer of 1961, the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) joined
forces with _____________ residents, SCLC, and NAACP to fight segregation there.
30. While blacks made up a large portion of the Southern population, they were deprived of
democracy’s most basic right: ____________.
31. Alabama banned the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
from _____________ in the state on June 1, 1956.
32. Combining the legal tactics of the NAACP with the nonviolence confrontation of the voting
movement, the (Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights) ACMHR attacked
segregation in __________________.
33. A carefully planned campaign of ___________ and sit-ins began in early 1963.
34. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was ______________ on Good Friday, April 12.
35. On May 2, over ____________ marched in waves from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
36. Over the next 5 days, police arrested ________________s of young people, overflowing the
city and county jails.
37. Unable to turn back the masses, policemen used high power fire hoses and attack
__________ to control demonstrators.
Page
39. The bombing and the death of ______________ children sparked outrage and sorrow
around the world, making the violent September day a major turning point in the civil rights
movement.
7
38. September 5, 1963-Floyd and ___________ Armstrong are the first students to enroll in
Birmingham’s desegregated schools.
40. In 1965, the fight for ______________ rights moved to Selma.
41. The murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young Black activist, prompted a 54-mile
________________ march to Montgomery.
42. The attack against _______________ participating in peaceful civil rights demonstrations in
May 1963 took place in Kelly Ingram Park, which is visible from this window.
Park Gallery
43. In 1969, _________________ Black leaders sent a telegram to the city’s white elected
officials and civic leaders citing __________________ specific injustices that they wanted
addressed.
44. __________________________ served five consecutive terms as mayor of Birmingham.
(Hint: He was Birmingham, AL’s first African American mayor.)
BCRI Milestones Gallery
45. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is a “_________________ ________________”, which
views the lessons of the past as crucial to understanding our heritage and defining our
future.
46. More than _________________ people visited the Institute during its first two weeks.
Human Rights Gallery
47. May 22, 2002-__________________ is convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to
life imprisonment (for his role in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church).
48. Public Safety Commissioner ____________ “___________” _____________ relied on 2
armored personnel carriers to intimidate and scare demonstrators during the civil rights
era.
Page
50. Mothers of the Plaza: Because of a law forbidding groups of people from standing still, the
mothers walk around and around the plaza. They wear white _________________
imprinted with the name of their children and carry family _________________.
8
49. Music has always been a part of the ___________________ for change.
51. What impacted you the most on your tour today of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute?
What lessons from the Movement can you take to help make the world a better place?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
50 Years Ago…
The March on Washington, D.C.
Page
9
Where were you?
What did your parents and grandparents say and do?
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: A CHRONOLOGY
Martin Luther King, Jr. is born is Atlanta, Georgia on January 15. He was originally christened Michael Luther King,
Jr., but in 1933 his father changed both their names.
1942 King enters Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Georgia.
1944 King enters Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
1947 King is licensed to preach and becomes assistant to his father, who is pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
1948 February 25, King is ordained to the Baptist ministry. In June he graduates from Morehouse College
with a degree in sociology and in September he enters Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania.
1951 King graduates from Crozier Theological Seminary and then attends Boston University.
1953 King marries Coretta Scott of Marion, Alabama.
1954 King becomes pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL. On May 17th, the
U.S Supreme Court rules that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional (Brown vs. Board of
Education of Topeka, Kansas).
1955 King receives a Ph.D in Systematic Theology from Boston University on June 5th. In December, Rosa Parks
is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Dr. King is called to lead the bus boycott
in Montgomery, Alabama as president of the newly established, Montgomery Improvement Association.
1956 King’s house is bombed. Supreme Court rules segregation on buses is illegal in Montgomery.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott ends in December after 382 days.
1959 King visits India. The King family leaves Montgomery, Alabama and goes back to Atlanta, Georgia.
1961-62 King’s efforts to desegregate Albany, Georgia were successfully halted by the city’s police chief, Laurie Pritchett.
1963 While jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, King responds to letter written by eight white Alabama
clergymen with his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” On August 28th, Dr. King gives his “I Have a Dream” speech.
1964 Dr. King receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
1965 In March, Dr. King leads protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
1968 Dr. King is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th.
Page
Compiled by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Archives Department
December 1994, Revised April 1998, May 2008
10
1929
Civil Rights Timeline
1865
Thirteenth Amendment: Slavery is abolished in the United States.
1865
June 19: American slaves in Galveston, Texas receive notification of their freedom by U.S. General Gordon
Granger – 2.5 years after they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Since then, celebrations of
this news are known as “Juneteenth.”
1865
The Ku Klux Klan is formed in Pulaski, Tennessee.
1870
Fifteenth Amendment: Black men are given the right to vote.
1870
Hiram Revels becomes the first Black Senator in the United States of America.
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson – This landmark U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the separate but equal doctrine and was
Nineteenth Amendment – Black women, along with all women, are granted the right to vote.
1938
U.S. Supreme Court rules that states must provide equal educational facilities for blacks. The plaintiff, Lloyd
Gaines of Missouri, mysteriously disappears after the court’s decision.
1943
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) stages its first successful sit-in at a Chicago restaurant.
1954
May 17: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas-U.S Supreme Court rules that segregated schools
are “inherently unequal” and orders that schools be integrated with “all deliberate speed”. Washington, DC
and Baltimore, MD begin desegregating schools.
1955
August 28: Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy, is murdered in Money, MS after allegedly wolfwhistling at a white woman.
1955
December 1: Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL. A well
planned boycott of the city buses continued for over a year and resulted in the desegregation of city buses and
the hiring of black bus drivers.
1956
November 13: Montgomery Bus Boycott ends after a federal court rules that racial bus segregation in
Montgomery, AL is unconstitutional.
1956
Sovereignty Commission is formed by state legislature and approved by the Governor of Mississippi. Its
purpose was to investigate all individuals and groups involved in civil rights meetings, demonstrations and
actions. The information compiled was turned over to local law enforcement, some of whom were Klansmen.
The Commission was finally disbanded in 1977.
1956
December 25: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth’s house is bombed. This is one of numerous assassination attempts
on his life. The next day he went ahead with planned direct action to desegregate buses in Birmingham,AL
following the Supreme Court ruling regarding bus desegregation in Montgomery,AL. This resulted in one of
several arrests that led to cases in the Supreme Court.
1957
September 4: Nine students volunteer to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, AR. Governor Orvis
Faubus orders the Arkansas National Guards to keep the nine students off the campus Elizabeth Eckford faces
a mob of students and adults determined to keep her from entering the school. Reporter Alex Wilson is
attacked by the mob outside Central. He dies one year later as a result of complications caused by blows to
the head.
1960
April 16-17: Student activists are invited to a meeting at Shaw University by Ella J. Baker, officer from the
SCLC. From that meeting the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born.
Page
1920
11
not overturned until 1954, with the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
1963
May 2: Under the leadership of Reverend Shuttlesworth, “Project C” begins in Birmingham. The Safety
Commissioner orders the attack on nonviolent protesters, including children, with dogs and fire hoses in
Kelly Ingram Park.
1963
June 3: Fannie Lou Hamer, organizer for SNCC and SCLC, and other civil rights workers defied segregation
laws on local buses. When they arrived in Winona, Mississippi, they were ordered off the bus and taken to
Montgomery County Jail. Once in her cell, she was beaten and, as a result, suffered life-long injuries to her
eye and kidney.
1963
June 12: NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers is killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
1963
August 28: More than 250,000 people gather at the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for
Freedom and Jobs, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have A Dream” speech.
1963
September 15: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, known as the
“Four Little Girls”, are killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Two other
black boys, Virgil Lamar Ware and Johnnie Robinson, are killed in separate racially inspired incidents in the
city.
1964
January 23: The 24th Amendment is ratified and added to the Constitution of the United States. It outlaws
poll taxes as a means to keep citizens from voting.
1964
June 20: Freedom Summer brings 1,000 young civil rights activists to Mississippi. Their goals were to
expand black voter registration, to organize a legally constituted "Freedom Democratic Party" that would
challenge the whites-only Mississippi Democratic Party, to establish "freedom schools" to teach reading and
math to black children, and to open community centers where black citizens could obtain legal and medical
assistance.
1964
June 21: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, Freedom Summer activists, are
abducted and killed by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
1964
July 2: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination in public places
(schools, lodging, federal programs and employment).
1964
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) sends a delegation to the Democratic Party’s presidential
convention to challenge the all-white Mississippi delegation on the grounds that it didn't fairly represent all
the people of Mississippi, since most black people hadn't been allowed to vote. Fannie Lou Hamer’s
testimony of injustices in Mississippi's delta was nationally televised and resulted in voting and speaking
rights to two delegates from the MFDP.
1964
Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
1965
February 26: A state trooper in Marion, Mississippi, kills Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights marcher.
1965
March 7: Bloody Sunday: In Selma, Alabama nonviolent activists begin their march from Selma to
Montgomery in protest for the right to vote. After they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge they are attacked by
state troopers.
1965
March 9: Turnaround Tuesday: Activists make a second attempt to march to Montgomery, but are faced
with state troopers again. The nonviolent protesters kneel, pray and turnaround. They wait for federal Judge
Frank Johnson to give a federal injunction allowing them to march.
1965
March 11: Rev. James Reeb, a volunteer marcher from Boston, is beaten to death in Selma, Alabama.
12
May 14: Freedom Riders, including John Lewis, attacked in Alabama while testing compliance with bus
desegregation laws.
Page
1961
1965
August 6: President Lyndon Johnson signs into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited the
states from using literacy tests, interpreting the Constitution, and other discriminatory methods of excluding
African Americans from voting.
1966
January 10: Vernon Dahmer, Sr. is killed in Klan bombing in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Some of his last
words were, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”
1967
October 2: Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as first black US Supreme Court Justice.
1968
April 4: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, fighting for the
rights of sanitation workers.
1968
June 5: Robert F. Kennedy is shot at close range in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after
winning the state primary race for presidential candidacy. The following day he was pronounced dead and the
nation mourned.
1977
Six years after Alabama Attorney General, Bill Baxley, starts investigating the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church, Robert Chambliss, nicknamed “Dynamite Bob”, is convicted of one count of murder in
Denise McNair’s death.
1978
Unita Blackwell, founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, becomes the first black
woman mayor in the history of Mississippi in the city of Mayersville, where she had once been denied the
right to vote.
1986
November: John Lewis is elected to the United States Congress as the representative for Georgia’s 5th
District.
1994
After two trials and two hung juries, Byron De La Beckwith is convicted for the murder of Medgar Evers in
1963.
1995
Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers, is elected chairwoman of the NAACP.
1998
August 21, Sam Bowers, Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Mississippi, is convicted of ordering the firebombing
that killed Vernon Dahmer, Sr. in 1966.
2001
Thomas Blanton is convicted of murder in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in September 1963.
The bombing took the lives of Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Denise
McNair.
2002
Bobby Frank Cherry is also convicted of murder in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
September 1963. Over the years the case was closed and reopened four times.
13
March 21-25: Judge Frank Johnson signs the federal injunction and the activists are allowed to march to
Montgomery.
Page
1965
SCAVENGER HUNT-**ANSWER KEY**
Barriers Gallery
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
Lorenzo “Piper” Davis
Public
segregation
unions
1,000s
48
$120
Chitlin’
jazz
social
community
African American
steel
medical
employment
little
unconstitutional
Gaston
calendars
Confrontation Gallery
20.
21.
segregation
Bombingham
parades
Montgomery
inequality
sit-ins
nonviolence
south
Anniston
Albany
voting
operating
Birmingham
Page
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
14
Movement Gallery
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
boycotts
arrested
1,000
thousand
dogs
Dwight
6
voting
protest
schoolchildren
Park Gallery
43.
44.
Twenty-one / fourteen
Richard Arrington, Jr.
BCRI Milestones Gallery
45.
46.
living institution
25,000
Human Rights Gallery
47.
48.
49.
50.
Bobby Frank Cherry
Eugene “Bull” Connor
fight
handkerchiefs / photographs
My Notes:
Page
15
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
Alabama enacts “Pupil Placement Law” to circumvent school desegregation.
12/26/56
Rev. Shuttlesworth and 150-200 others rode the buses in Birmingham sitting in any open seat.
21 were arrested. This led to one of several cases that went to the Supreme Court.
09/10/57
White students boycott classes at Woodlawn High School to protest efforts to desegregate.
10/20/58
Rev. Shuttlesworth, Rev. J.S. Phifer and 11 other blacks are arrested when they protest continued bus
segregation.
10/21/58
Demonstration held in Birmingham to demand desegregation of city parks.
12/14/59
Federal District Judge H.H. Grooms rules that blacks can be seated anywhere in Birmingham buses.
04/02/60
Ten black Birmingham college students arrested during sit-ins at downtown lunch counters.
04/24/61
U.S. District Court of Appeals orders Birmingham bus terminal desegregated and abolishes separate
waiting rooms.
10/24/61
U.S. District Judge H.H. Grooms orders desegregation of city facilities by 1/15/62.
12/28/61
Birmingham City Commission votes to close city recreational facilities rather than integrate.
02/07/62
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACHMR) petitions city and county government to
remove all racial signs and eliminate racial job barriers.
03/06/62
Anti-Justice Committee (AIC) sends letter to white merchants calling for desegregation of stores.
03/15/62
Boycott of Birmingham downtown merchants begins.
06/28/62
Judge H.H. Grooms issues permanent injunction prohibiting Birmingham Transit Company from
racial seating.
07/21/62
Tennessee Coal and Iron (TCI) begins implementation of desegregation policy affecting approximately
20,000 workers in Birmingham.
04/03/63
Birmingham mass demonstrations in Kelly Ingram Park, known as “Project C”, begin.
07/23/63
City of Birmingham, Alabama repeals segregation ordinances.
09/05/63
Floyd and Dwight Armstrong are the first black students to enroll in Birmingham’s desegregated schools.
09/15/63
Four girls are killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the city’s largest and oldest African
American church (Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley). Two boys,
Virgil Lamar Ware and Johnnie Robinson are also killed in two separate incidents on this day.
03/22/67
Alabama ordered to desegregate all public schools.
Compiled by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Archives Department.
December 1994, Revised April 1998, May 2008
Page
07/22/55
16
Birmingham’s Road to Desegregation: A CHRONONOLOGY
Page
17