The young people of the 60s wanted to build a more liberal and inclusive world. They wanted peace instead of endless wars. They wanted people’s power instead of governmental, military and industrial power. Most of all they wanted Love instead of hate!

The 60s encompassed a host of historically significant initiatives, events and occurrences: The Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement, Cuban Missile Crisis, Man landing on the Moon, March on Washington, Bloody Sunday in Selma, Selma to Montgomery March, Civil Rights Act, Appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first African American Supreme Court Judge, Voting Rights Act. Tthe 60s also saw the assassinations of US President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, James Reeb, Sammy Younge, Johnathan Daniels, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Viola Liuzzo, Robert Kennedy, Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), Carol Denise McNair (11), and many more.

In Alabama, Birmingham City and Lowndes County epitomized the White effort to keep Blacks down and hold onto power under the guise of White Supremacy and their belief in “Whiteness as Rightness.” The 3 Ts Movement operated action programs in Birmingham and surrounding areas in the summer of 1965 and in Lowndes County in 1965, 1966, and 1967.

In the 1960s, Birmingham was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States. Strict segregation was enforced by written laws that supported violence. Martin Luther King Jr. called Birmingham the most segregated city in the United States.

Blacks in Birmingham had to encounter social, cultural, and educational barriers as well as legal and economic ones every day of their lives.

The Birmingham Campaign of the Civil Rights Movement was highlighted by the Black Boycott of major Businesses in Birmingham to bring about open employment for all races, and end segregation in public facilities, restaurants, schools, and stores.

When the businessmen and the city government refused, the Campaign started sit-ins and marches designed to elicit an agreement or mass arrests. Thousands of adults, college students, high school teenagers and junior high and elementary school children participated and were arrested and jailed. Before their arrests, they were knocked down by water cannon, bitten by police attack dogs, clubbed with night sticks and shocked by cattle prods.

Birmingham was the city where a powerful bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four African American girls during church services and injured fourteen (14) others.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in a Birmingham City jail when he wrote his famous letter (Letter from a Birmingham Jail) to his white fellow clergymen who had called Dr. King’s activities and the activities of the Birmingham Campaign “unwise and untimely.” Near the end of his letter, he wrote:

“Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.”