1963

1963 is the 92nd year after the founding of the City of Birmingham.

Events

A watershed in the civil rights movement occurred in 1963 when Birmingham Civil Rights Movement leader Fred Shuttlesworth requested that Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come to Birmingham to help end segregation. Together they launched "Project C" (for "Confrontation"), a massive assault on the Jim Crow system. During April and May daily sit-ins and mass marches were met with police repression, tear gas, attack dogs, and arrests. More than 3,000 people were arrested during these protests, many of the children. These protests were ultimately successful, leading not only to desegregation of public accommodations in Birmingham but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

While imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause against segregation. Birmingham is also known for a bombing which occurred later that year, in which four black girls were killed by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The event would inspire the African-American poet Dudley Randall's opus, The Ballad of Birmingham, as well as jazz musician John Coltrane's song, "Alabama."

Deaths

See also List of Birmingham homicides in 1963

Notes

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See Also

• 1963 Birmingham Barons
• 1963 Birmingham Steeldogs
• 1963 Iron Bowl

2000s

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