1963 SPECIAL REPORT: BREAKTHROUGH IN BIRMINGHAM

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The broadcasting and publication of the images of racial violence in Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963 represented a turning point in the civil rights movement. The Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, at the behest of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, a local civil rights group, invited Martin Luther King, Jr., and his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to help organize a campaign of boycotts and demonstrations to defy Birmingham’s harsh segregation laws. Along with the local African American community, King and his associates helped transform the fledgling Birmingham campaign into a striking spectacle, a continuum of gripping visual images building in intensity. Crusade leaders relied on the work of photojournalists, from within and outside the movement, to capture and disseminate riveting images. As circumstances grew more heated, images of nonviolent civilians interacting with white police officers—graphic shots and footage of black protesters being attacked by dogs, beaten with clubs, and hosed down with high-pressure water jets—appeared in a broad range of media outlets. In the months following this widespread coverage, national public opinion surveys reported an increase in white Americans’ support of civil rights. This section explores how the media’s approach to these images resulted in multiple and at times contradictory stories, each designed to report, offer evidence, or persuade.


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