The Bad Guy

The Bad Guy. March Route to Retail. A key player in the Birmingham civil rights drama was Public Safety Commissioner Theophilus Eugene Connor. He earned the nickname "Bull” because of his booming voice as a radio sports announcer. White voters who supported his politics of racial hatred kept him in office a total of 26 years. During that time, Connor held almost complete power over the City's police force. Connor often used the police and fire department to terrorize Black [citizens], especially those who dared challenge the City's segregation laws. “Bull' is the law in Birmingham, like it or not,” a local businessman told a New York Times reporter in 1960. , Paired marker , April 6, 1963 , Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor points as police arrest Rev. Shuttlesworth, his political enemy, with other marchers outside the federal courthouse on Fifth Avenue North, “Project C" organizers had hoped Connor would live up to his nickname and help their cause by clashing directly with non-violent protestors, and he does. Over the next five weeks, Connor orders the arrest of hundreds of protestors. He also orders his men to unleash police dogs and high-pressure water hoses on many child foot soldiers. These actions seal Connor's place in history as “the bad guy" in the civil rights drama that unfolds on the streets of Birmingham. , "The civil rights movement owes 'Bull" Connor as much as it owes Abraham Lincoln." , President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) , In a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lesson B11: Discuss how history might have turned out differently had Connor used less force against the Birmingham protestors.