ACMHR & the Second Revolution

ACMHR and the Second Revolution. March Route for Moral Justice. Rev. Shuttlesworth returned frequently to Birmingham to lead the ACMHR in a strategic alliance with the SCLC to bring national attention to Birmingham and the need to end racial discrimination in America. ACMHR staff worked with the SCLC's Executive Director Rev. Wyatt T. Walker to plan and organize a series of direct action strategies : sit-ins at segregated lunch counters; kneel-ins at White churches; mass demonstrations; jailings; and boycotts. Their goal was to disrupt Birmingham's economy so that its White leaders would negotiate in good faith to meet Blacks' demands for equality in hiring, removing racial signs at department stores, hiring Black clerks, and ending other forms of discrimination. , Paired marker , April-May 1963 , The 1963 Birmingham Campaign lasted from April 3 to May 10. It is one of the most important campaigns in the modern American Civil Rights Movement. Dubbed “Project C" (C stands for Confrontation), the campaign exposed the ugliness of deep racial hatred. It embarrassed President John F. Kennedy as the leader of American democracy in the free world. He set in motion plans that would create the country's most important civil rights laws. Birmingham also sparked protests around the country (758 demonstrations in 186 American cities for 10 weeks) and inspired people worldwide in their own struggles for civil and human rights. For seven years, the ACMHR's work laid the foundation for this battle in Birmingham that changed the course of American and world history. , "Birmingham was a fuse-it detonated a revolution that went on to win scores of other victories." , Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , From his book, Why We Can't Wait., Lesson F15: If the first American Revolution was about freedom from the unjust power of British rule, then in what way can the Civil Rights Movement be called the "Second American Revolution"?