IN THE UNITED STATES
On April 2, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., arrived in Birmingham to join Shuttlesworth in a direct-action campaign to end segregation. Non-violent marches were one of the key tactics that the organizers of the Birmingham campaign sought to employ. A city ordinance, however, required a permit for parades or public demonstrations. On April 3, Shuttlesworth sent Lola Hendricks, the secretary of a local civil rights organization, and the Reverend Ambus Hill of the Lily Grove Baptist Church to the office of City Commissioner Bull Connor to request a permit to parade or demonstrate on the sidewalks of Birmingham. Connor, an avowed segregationist, responded, “No, you will not get a permit in Birmingham, Alabama to picket. I will picket you over to the City Jail.” Undeterred, the Birmingham campaign launched with sit-ins and marches; participants were arrested for parading without a permit. A week later, the City of Birmingham obtained a court injunction prohibiting the leaders of the campaign from parading without a permit. Dr. King had planned a Good Friday march; however, he had never violated a court injunction. Believing that a decision not to march would end the campaign, Dr. King, Reverend Shuttlesworth, and fifty other people marched on Good Friday and were arrested. During the week that he spent in jail, Dr. King expressed the principle of non-violent direct action to counter pervasive injustice in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”