Video: 'Alabama City Remembered as Climactic Battle of Civil Rights Movement'

(Friday, May 3, 1963, demonstrations were held between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. CST; during the Children’s Crusade, part of the Birmingham campaign
in the Civil Rights Movement) –On the second day of the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, members of the police and fire departments unleashed police dogs and fire hoses this afternoon on African-American school children marching to protest racial segregation.

Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, realizing that the Birmingham jail was full from previous demonstrations, had decided to change police tactics today to keep protesters out of the downtown business area.

Video: 'No More: The Children of Birmingham 1963 and the Turning Point of the Civil Rights Movement'

A thousand students had gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church and left to walk across Kelly Ingram Park while chanting, “We’re going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom … freedom … freedom.”

As the demonstrators left the church, police warned them to stop and turn back, “or you’ll get wet”.

When they continued, Connor ordered the city’s fire hoses, set at a level that would peel the bark off a tree or separate bricks from mortar, to be turned on the children.

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Boys’ shirts were ripped off, and girls were pushed over the tops of cars by the force of the water. When the students crouched or fell, the blasts of water rolled them down the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks.

Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, “Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want ’em to see the dogs work.”

By 3:00 p.m. CST, the protest was over. During a kind of truce, protesters went home. Police removed the barricades and re-opened the streets to traffic.

Video: 'American Experience: The Kennedys - Part 2' (Birmingham at 25:38)

The images had a profound effect on Birmingham.

Horrified at what the Birmingham police were doing to protect segregation, New York Senator Jacob K. Javits declared, “The country won’t tolerate it,” and pressed Congress to pass a civil rights bill.

Similar reactions were reported by Kentucky Senator Sherman Cooper, and Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, who compared Birmingham to South Africa under apartheid.

A New York Times editorial called the behavior of the Birmingham police “a national disgrace.”