Police dogs and firehoses

Police dogs and firehoses is, for most of the world, the image of Birmingham made by Bull Connor and the Birmingham Police Department during the Birmingham Campaign of the African American Civil Rights Movement.

While both weapons had been used before to control protesters, the images most often seen by the general public were recorded on May 3, 1963, the second day of the Children's Crusade when thousands of African American schoolchildren volunteered to join the non-violent protests, and likely go to jail, as a demonstration against segregation. On that second day Connor realized that the jails could hold no more people, so the tactics of the police changed from mass arrests to keeping protesters out of the downtown business area.

Over a thousand students gathered at 16th Street Baptist Church by mid day, leaving in groups to walk across Kelly Ingram Park toward Birmingham City Hall and the downtown business district chanting, "We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom...freedom...freedom." As the demonstrators left the church they were warned to stop and turn back, "or you'll get wet." When they continued, Commissioner Connor ordered the city's fire hoses turned on the children. The first soaking mist sent many of the demonstrators fleeing, but a remnant of 20 or so stood their ground. As the water pressure was increased, boys' shirts were ripped off with the force of the water, and young women were lifted off their feet over the tops of cars. When the students fell or crouched down, the blasts of water rolled them down the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks. Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, "Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want 'em to see the dogs work. Look at those niggers run!"

Black parents and adults who were not participating, shouted cheers to the students marching. But when the hoses were turned on, the adults began to throw rocks and bottles at the police. To disperse them, Connor ordered German Shepherd police dogs on them. The dogs also received peltings with bricks and stones. James Bevel wove in and out of the crowds warning them, "If any cops get hurt, we're going to lose this fight." At 3 P.M. however, the protest was over, and in a surreal truce, protesters left the churches and went home as police cleared blockades off the streets for traffic again. That evening King told worried parents in a crowd of a thousand, "Don't worry about your children who are in jail. The eyes of the world are on Birmingham. We're going on in spite of dogs and fire hoses. We've gone too far to turn back."

Television cameras broadcast the scenes of fire hoses knocking down schoolchildren and dogs attacking individual demonstrators with no means of protecting themselves, to the nation. Where support for King and the SCLC from the black community was disjointed prior to May 3, when pictures were shown of what was happening, "the black community was instantaneously consolidated behind King," according to attorney David Vann. New York Senator Jacob K. Javits, horrified at the lengths the Birmingham police were going to protect segregation, declared, "the country won't tolerate it," and pressed Congress to pass a civil rights bill. Similar reactions were reported by Kentucky Senator Sherman Cooper, and Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, who compared Birmingham to South Africa under Apartheid. A New York Times editorial called the behavior of the Birmingham police "a national disgrace." The Washington Post editorialized, "The spectacle in Birmingham...must excite the sympathy of the rest of the country for the decent, just, and reasonable citizens of the community, who have so recently demonstrated at the polls their lack of support for the very policies that have produced the Birmingham riots. The authorities who tried, by these brutal means, to stop the freedom marchers do not speak or act in the name of the enlightened people of the city." President Kennedy sent Burke Marshall to Birmingham to try to negotiate a truce.