Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 10, 2013

The Birmingham campaign was a strategic movement in the spring of 1963 organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to draw attention to the unequal treatment of black Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. Organizers led by Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) used nonviolent direct action tactics, beginning with a boycott of businesses. Sit-ins and marches followed, intended to provoke mass arrests. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, high school, college, and elementary students were trained to participate, resulting in hundreds of arrests and greater media attention. To dissuade demonstrators and control the protests the local police used water jets and dogs on children and bystanders. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. Scenes of the ensuing mayhem caused an international outcry, leading to intervention by the Kennedy administration. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation surged, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks. The campaign brought national force to bear on the issue of racial segregation and was a major factor in the push towards the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Full article...)

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