And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and forever. To Alabama Governor George Wallace, the continuation of segregation was a solemn promise to Martin Luther King. It was a scourge he vowed to overcome in the city of Birmingham. The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, whose church and home had been bombed because of his activism, began a campaign to integrate the downtown shopping district. King joined him in March of 1963. They both expected an extreme response from Public Safety Commissioner segregationist Eugene Bull Connor.

One of the good fortunes of the civil rights movement were its enemies. Where could you find a better enemy than Bull Connor of Birmingham?

King submitted to arrest on April 12th, Good Friday, to draw maximum press coverage. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had asked King to avoid confrontations with police wanting to pursue civil rights gains through the courts, not the streets. Dr. King said, Mr. Attorney General, I can best serve this country and my people by focusing on the evils of segregation. He said it's a corruption of the society to corruption of the soul. Sitting in his jail cell in Birmingham, King wrote about that corruption.

He responded to an open letter that appeared in the Birmingham News that same day. It was titled A Call for Unity and was signed by eight white clergymen. Their appeal made reference to outside leadership, calling the protests unwise and untimely. King wrote in the margins of that newspaper. I am in Birmingham because injustice is here, he went on. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known.

The sentiments King expressed in the letter had already made an impact on students who had committed themselves to civil rights activism throughout the Deep South.

We were greatly influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. and the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. But we didn't like the tempo of change. We wanted to speed it up.

This. Setting it up on May 3rd, students reenergize the campaign. Some were in high school, others were even younger. The Birmingham campaign became known as the Children's Crusade.

Now, it was easy for black students like myself in the South to say, well, if they can do it in Little Rock, they can do it in Montgomery. If they can stand up, we can stand up to the police.

When Bull Connor ordered the police to disperse the protesters with dogs. It was clear this was a real battle, a violent confrontation.

Firemen were ordered to use the full force of their hoses on the demonstrators.

The local newspapers supported Bull Connor's response, blaming the chaos on the demonstrators.

I really believe he thought somehow in some way that he was.

Yes, but he didn't understand the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. He didn't understand the spirit of the movement.

Television and newspaper reports captured the brutality in Birmingham and showed it to the whole nation outside the region. It was shocking. It was horrifying. It was unacceptable.

It brought the civil rights movement into people's homes with many American families watching the six o'clock news in such a way that it simply just couldn't be ignored.

In just a week, the demonstrators non-violent response created a public outcry that Birmingham could not dismiss.

On May 10th, symbols of segregation, like separate water fountains became relics as city leaders signed the Birmingham truce. In addition, a plan was agreed upon to desegregate lunch counters. This was the kind of meaningful negotiation Martin Luther King had called for in his letter. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was well timed in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation for years now I've heard the word weight and rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.

This weight has almost always meant never we must come to see with one of our distinguished jurists that justice too long delayed is justice denied. These words had inspired citizens, young and old, to take direct action on the streets of Birmingham. The letter was soon published in newspapers and magazines, and its power was undeniable. King had gone to Birmingham to fight injustice. In the end, his most powerful weapon was the letter he wrote from the confines of a jail cell.