Tags : civi rights
Birmingham Pardons Civil Rights Protesters
Birmingham, AL (AHN) – Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford on Tuesday offered pardons to protesters arrested in 1963, when his city was the hotbed of mass demonstrations, including one that had police using fire hoses and dogs against a march of children, during the Civil Rights Movement.
The pardons were announced during a City Council meeting, ahead of the public opening of a Civil Rights Heritage Trail downtown next week.
The Trail will commemorate the Birmingham Campaign, a movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that culminated in the arrest of hundreds of black children in 1963 who tried to march to the Birmingham City Hall.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s’s release from jail was the reason for the Children’s Crusade, and he had written his now-famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail at the time. In that letter addressed to local white clergy, King detailed the reasons why blacks could not wait any longer for the civil rights due them under the U.S. Constitution.
Birmingham is the largest city and capital of Alabama, a historically red state in the heart of the nation’s Bible Belt. President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American commander-in-chief, had lost in the state, 39 percent to 61 percent, during the election last year to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) despite turning many other red states, such as Virginia, blue, or Democratic.
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