Courthouse Prayer

Courthouse Prayer. March Route to Retail. In the 1940s and 1950s, the NAACP filed a stream of lawsuits against Jim Crow laws that had given Whites political, economic and social superiority over Blacks for more than 100 years. Most of Birmingham's NAACP cases, filed by local Black attorneys such as Arthur Shores and Orzell Billingsley, involved Rev. Shuttlesworth and his challenges of the city's segregation laws. By the time of the 1963 marches, the U.S Supreme Court was declaring these laws unconstitutional, despite having upheld them in the past. Federal judges in the modern era reversed 100 years of state-approved segregation, especially in the American South., Paired marker , April 6, 1963 , Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth leads a group of protestors who kneel to pray just before police arrest them for parading without a permit on Fifth Avenue North. They march near the federal courthouse, where Shuttlesworth is a plaintiff in at least 14 lawsuits. It is here that Southern-born federal Judge H. Hobart Grooms rules in 1961 that segregation of City parks is unconstitutional and orders Birmingham to open them to Blacks. In response, “Bull” Connor and his fellow City commissioners close all 67 City parks. In 1962, Grooms also orders the University of Alabama to accept three Black students, including Vivian Malone who sued the school for admittance. In response, Alabama Gov. George Wallace makes his famous stand in the schoolhouse door to block the Black students from entering. , "George Wallace and 'Bull' Connor were the greatest help we received in the whole civil rights thrust." , Arthur Shores , Prominent civil rights attorney and Birmingham's first Black City Councilor, Lesson B10: Discuss why city and state officials in Alabama refused to obey federal court rulings against segregation.