Paying the Ultimate Price

Paying the Ultimate Price. March Route Towards a Purposeful Life. Rev. Shuttlesworth was not completely satisfied with the settlement Dr. King worked out with Birmingham's White power structure to end “Project C” while he lay injured at the hospital. Even so, Birmingham's African Americans finally won their demands to remove racial signs from water fountains and bathrooms; the hiring of Black clerks at department stores, and a few other victories. Their plan to desegregate public schools was revived in June 1963 when federal courts ordered Birmingham City Schools to integrate. Only a few brave parents attempted to enroll their children in all-White schools. Rev. Shuttlesworth himself led the two children of James Armstrong, a barber and ACMHR activist, to Graymont Elementary in September. But school integration was the last straw for the Ku Klux Klan, whose members developed their deadly plan to stop it. , Paired marker , September 15, 1963 , On September 15, 1963, the Klansmen's bomb exploded at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, one of the city's largest Black churches. It had been a central staging area for the spring demonstrations. Of all the many bombings in Birmingham that were meant to intimidate Black citizens, no one had been killed until this one took the lives of four girls. The sermon that day was “A Love That Forgives." Two Black boys, Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson, were also killed in two separate incidents within a few hours of the bombing. The deaths of six innocent children stunned the city, the nation and the world, and shined a glaring spotlight on the evils of racism. The violence increased President Kennedy's resolve to create the country's strongest civil rights bill, which would completely integrate all public accommodations. Both Dr. King and Rev. Shuttlesworth spoke at the girls' funerals. , "The patience of an oppressed people cannot endure forever." , Birmingham Manifesto , a document announcing “Project C" in April1963., Lesson E15: How do you think people in countries around the world viewed American democracy after a nonviolent movement produced such violent deaths?