apr 12, 1963 - Birmingham Protests/MLK Jailed

Description:

As part of a series of protests orchestrated by the SCLC in Birmingham, Alabama. The reaction of the police to the peaceful protestors caught the eye of the media and enabled the rest of the nation to view the atrocities taking place in Birmingham. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as one of his top aides, Rev. Ralph Abernathy were part of the protest, and were jailed as a result of the injunction that Eugene "Bull" Connor had gotten from an Alabama State Court. These protests were a form of civil disobedience after SCLC demonstrators were told that they could not march in one of the most segregated cities in the nation. After King was jailed, he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail -- one of the most influential pieces written about the civil rights movement.