When I was older and began studying the civil rights movement, I learned that many among Birmingham's black leadership, especially ministers, thought King's confrontational style would only make matters worse.
But King had been invited by Mr. Confrontation himself, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, whom, as a reporter, I interviewed decades later. You couldn't meet a more pleasant person, but Shuttlesworth didn't know the meaning of backing down.
He was beaten by whites, his house was bombed, his children's lives were threatened when he tried to enroll them in a white school. None of that deterred him from seeking integration.
Shuttlesworth called King, who eight years earlier had led the successful Montgomery bus boycott, because the Birmingham movement needed a spark. Blacks were only asking to use public bathrooms, try on clothes at department stores, and be hired as store clerks. But that was too much for most whites.
King responded to Shuttlesworth's call and organized marches that he hoped would grab the national media's attention and thus put pressure on Birmingham's business community to relent. The strategy might have failed had local officials simply allowed the marchers to demonstrate peaceably.
Instead, Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor and his cops used nightsticks to beat the crowd, and police dogs to bite their legs, while firefighters trained highly pressurized water from their hoses at the helpless demonstrators' bodies.
School had not let out for the summer, but King called on young people to join the demonstrations. Many college and high school students were among those arrested for demonstrating. A 9-year-old classmate of mine was one of the youngest jailed for marching.
