School Integration Now

School Integration Now. March Route for Education. Birmingham had the well-earned reputation of being America's deadliest defender of segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Civil rights leaders Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, head of the local Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the national Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), believed that breaking Birmingham's racial barriers would help Blacks win equal rights across the country. So in April 1963, the ACMHR and SCLC launched the Birmingham Campaign, dubbed “Project C," where "C" stood for confrontation. Their members organized non-violent sit-ins, boycotts, pickets, marches and other mass demonstrations to pressure city leaders to integrate department stores and public facilities and later Birmingham public schools, which were still segregated nine years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. , Paired marker , April 9, 1963 , Desegregation of Birmingham public schools was one of several important goals of the 1963 Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. At the start of “Project C,” the ACMHR and SCLC leaders presented a list of demands to Birmingham's civic and political leaders. The list included creating a biracial committee to set a time-table for desegregating public schools under the Brown ruling. In this picture, Birmingham police confront and arrest demonstrators who picket for integrated schools in front of Loveman's department store. Other demands by “Project C” leaders included desegregating department store lunch counters, hiring Blacks for better-paying, white-collar jobs in stores and in city government, and reopening public parks, which city officials had closed to prevent federal court-ordered integration. , "I want to go to any school and any store downtown and sit in the movies." , Negro Girls Define 'Freedom' from Cell in Birmingham Jail , Philip Benjamin, Special to The New York Times, May 9. 1963. , Lesson D8: Discuss how the Brown decision encouraged Blacks to push equal inclusion in education and other aspects of American society.