Good Friday march
The Good Friday march was a Civil Rights demonstration organized by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as part of their "Birmingham Campaign" to desegregate Birmingham businesses, parks and hiring practices. It took place on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday, on April 12, 1963.
SCLC president Martin Luther King Jr had arrived in Birmingham on April 2, shortly after the birth of his daughter Bernice, to join the planned campaign of nonviolent public demonstrations. The ACMHR's applications for parade permits had been unilaterally denied by Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, subjecting participants to arrest. King pledged at mass meetings to join in, saying that it was "better to go to jail in dignity than to accept segregation". He announced at a mass meeting on April 10 that in two days, "Ralph Abernathy and I will make our move. I can't think of a better day than Good Friday to for a move to freedom."
That same Wednesday as King's announcement, the Birmingham City Commission secured a court order from Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Wiliam Jenkins enjoining the movement from "sponsoring, encouraging or participating in mass demonstrations," without securing a permit from the city. The injunction was served at the Gaston Motel at 1:00 AM on Thursday. Though the SCLC had generally agreed to obey court-issued opinions while challenging local laws, they had already determined that in Birmingham they would defy any court orders that they interpreted as denying them their constitutional rights. Wyatt Walker prepared a formal response to that effect to be issued to the press on Thursday morning.
On Thursday evening, Abernathy addressed a mass meeting at 6th Avenue Baptist Church, promising that, "we are going to turn this town upside down and inside out tomorrow," and reassuring those with second thoughts that they would appeal, "to a higher judge than Judge Jenkins."
The SCLC was notified on Friday morning that the city was now charging $1,500 rather than $200 for bail, and that their bail fund was nearly depleted. King's speaking fees and donor contacts were its primary source of income, and some urged him to avoid arrest so that he could raise money to get the other marchers out. King's father also worried that in a city like Birmingham where the police worked hand in hand with the Ku Klux Klan, that an arrest might lead to his son's death. After a period of prayer and fasting alone in his room at the motel on Friday morning, King changed into denim work clothes and announced that he would lead the Good Friday march as a matter of faith. Wyatt Walker telephoned Birmingham Police inspector W. J. Haley to inform them of the time and place of the scheduled march.
Participants gathered Friday morning at Zion Hill Baptist Church where speakers such as Andrew Young and Dorothy Cotton addressed the crowd. In the church office, King and Abernathy spoke on the telephone with President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who were both urging him to call off the demonstrations in favor of a negotiated truce. At 1:00 PM King announced from the pulpit that the march would begin.
From the front of the church at 1427 6th Avenue North the group proceeded east in the direction of Birmingham City Hall. Along the route, police had cleared away white onlookers. Black neighbors, many dressed in their Sunday best, observed the procession. The marchers passed St Paul United Methodist Church and 16th Street Baptist Church before reaching the corner of Kelly Ingram Park, within sight of a police barricade at the next intersection.
Abruptly, King turned the column south on 16th Street and then back onto 5th Avenue North to avoid the barricade. They proceeded eastward on 5th Avenue until they were met by Bull Connor and a Birmingham Police officer on a motorcycle just past 18th Street, in front of the marble colonnade of the U.S. Post Office and Federal Courthouse.
At Connor's command, the officer yelled at the group to "halt". Immediately the leaders dropped to their knees and began to pray, followed by the rest of the demonstrators as paddy wagons pulled around. Most of the demonstrators were arrested peacefully. King was grabbed by the belt and heaved into the wagon. The site of the confrontation is marked on the Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail. The marchers taken directly to Birmingham City Jail for booking. All were charged with parading without a permit. Eight of the leaders, all ministers, were also charged for contempt of Jenkins' injunction.
King was isolated in solitary confinement while the other marchers kept their spirits up by singing hymns and freedom songs, fulfilling Shuttlesworth's prediction that the marches would "turn the jails into church houses". Most demonstrators were bailed out the next morning. King was kept in prison and used the time to compose his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" to detail the reasoning, strategy, and moral context for the public demonstrations.
Participants
Approximately fifty people participated in the Good Friday march:
- Ralph Abernathy
- Lila Baylor
- Ralph Galt
- Robert Fulton
- Henry Haynes
- Martin Luther King Jr
- Nathaniel Lindsey
- Fred Shuttlesworth
Aftermath
At the city jail, King was isolated in solitary confinement while the other marchers kept their spirits up by singing hymns and freedom songs, fulfilling Shuttlesworth's prediction that the marches would "turn the jails into church houses". Most demonstrators were bailed out the next morning. King was kept in prison and used the time to compose his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to detail the reasoning, strategy, and moral context for the public demonstrations.
The eight ministers appealed their convictions and mounted a challenge, Walker v. City of Birmingham to the permit ordinance and the court injunction on constitutional grounds. At every step, up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued its opinion in 1967, the appeals were overturned on the basis that the proper remedy to challenge the permit ordinance was through the state courts and that without exhausting legal remedies, defiance of the circuit judge's order was unwarranted.
King quietly flew back Birmingham on October 30, 1967 to serve out his five-day sentence in the Jefferson County jail.
A separate suit,Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham challenged only the city's actions in denying the permit and arresting the marchers. In that case, decided in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969, the justices ruled that the city ordinance as written and applied violated the demonstrators' constitutional rights and thereby overturned Shuttlesworth's conviction.
References
- Oppenheimer, David Benjamin (Summer 1993) "Martin Luther King, Walker v. City of Birmingham, and the Letter from Birmingham Jail". U. C. Davis Law Review Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 791-833
- Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Baton Rouge: LSU Press. ISBN 0807126551
- Huntley, Horace and John W. McKerley, eds. (2009) Foot Soldiers for Democracy: The Men, Women, and Children of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press ISBN 9780252076688
- Roy, Deborah A. Roy (August 28, 2013) "The Good Friday parade: Birmingham — April 12, 1963" SCOTUSblog - accessed September 14, 2017
- "The momentous events leading to Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'" (January 12, 2017) The Birmingham Times