the City of Birmingham, that Randall Kennedy is researching for his upcoming book, “From Protest to War, Triumphs and Defeats in Struggles for Racial Justice, 1950 to 1970.” Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School. Supreme Court case that has lasting implications, even today. What happened then was a series of events that would alter the course of the civil rights movement and Birmingham itself. So, when faced by a similar order, they decided to violate it and proceed with the march. In Birmingham, King and his team decided to take a different approach. However, while the appeal was working its way through the courts, the momentum behind the march in Albany dissipated. There, when a court order had kept the movement from staging a march, the SCLC decided to appeal it. King and the SCLC had experienced disappointment just a few months before in Albany, Georgia. In Birmingham - then known as “Bombingham” due to the number of racially motivated bombings of Black homes, businesses and churches that had occurred in the city - the civil rights leadership saw an opportunity to refocus the national spotlight on the discrimination, segregation and outright violence Blacks faced in the South. The modern movement had gotten its start in the state, with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. They would bring the civil rights movement to Birmingham, what King called “the most segregated city in America.” and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to strike at the very heart of racial segregation and discrimination in the South.

sitting in the Jefferson County Jail, in Birmingham, Alabama, 11/3/67.

Martin luther king jr in jail