Woman in Paddy Wagon

Woman in Paddy Wagon. March Route to Retail. For seven years before the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, Rev. Shuttlesworth and other leaders of the ACMHR taught masses of Black citizens how to take direct but non-violent actions to gain first-class American citizenship. Inspired by faith, these ordinary Black men, women and children became foot soldiers in the marches, bus rides, pickets and sit-ins in the retail district. They willfully disobeyed segregation laws and willingly went to jail. Police arrested them in marches on charges of parading without a permit (even though "Project C" leaders asked the City for a permit). If arrested on vagrancy charges, police could keep protestors from contacting family and friends for as long as three days., Paired marker , April 1963 , This woman sits in a police paddy wagon behind Loveman's department store, where police arrest her for picketing the store. The majority of Birmingham Blacks do not join the front-line battle for freedom by participating in the marches, sit-ins or pickets. Many, however, do stay away from shopping in the downtown retail district. They refuse to buy goods or services from businesses that do not treat them as first-class citizens. This causes White-owned stores to lose millions of dollars (according to some estimates) during the profitable holiday shopping seasons. Thus, Birmingham Blacks protest by closing their wallets and using “selective buying” as a form of direct action. , "The time comes when a man has to stand up and be counted." , An Unknown Birmingham Citizen , Quoted in the April 12, 1960, New York Times article, LESSON 14: Describe what the South was like for African American citizens before the Civil Rights Movement.