402 CHAPTER 13|CIVIL RIGHTS
created to coordinate the protests. The Greensboro Woolworth’s
was integrated on July 26, 1961, but the protests continued in
other cities. By August 1961, the sit-ins had 70,000 participants
and 3,000 arrests.^22 The sit-ins marked an important shift in the
tactics of the civil rights movement away from the court-based
approach and toward the nonviolent civil disobedience that had
been successful in Montgomery.
The next signifi c a n t e v e n t s o c c u r r e d i n B i r m i n g h a m , A l a b a m a ,
which experienced 18 unsolved bombings of black churches and
homes in a six-year period. During a peaceful protest in 1963,
Martin Luther King Jr. and many others were arrested. While in
solitary confi nement, King wrote his “Letter from the Birming-
ham Jail,” an eloquent statement of the principles of nonviolent
civil disobedience. Responding to white religious leaders who
said that King’s actions were “unwise and untimely” and that
“when rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and
in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets,” King wrote a justifi ca-
tion for civil disobedience, asserting that everyone had an obligation to follow just
laws but an equal obligation to break unjust laws.PUBLIC OPINION AND LEGISLATIVE ACTION
Following King’s release from jail, the situation escalated. The protest leaders
decided to use children in the next round of demonstrations. After more than 1,000
children were arrested and the jails were overfl owing, the police turned fi re hoses
a nd police dogs on chi ldren tr y ing to continue their ma rch. Media covera ge turned
public opinion in favor of the marchers as the country expressed outrage over the
violence in Birmingham. Similar protests occurred in over 100 southern cities.
On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy called on Congress to take action. The
next day Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader in Mississippi, was shot and killed.
A week later Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress that would guarantee
equal social and political rights to blacks. On August 28, King delivered his “I
Have a Dream” speech to a record-breaking crowd in Washington, D.C. President
Kennedy was assassinated before his legislation could be passed, but the activ-
ists’ concerted eff orts over two decades were key in pressuring Congress to pass
meaningful legislation. (For details, see “The Legislative Arena” in this chapter.)
With the passage of this landmark legislation, large-scale activity for civil rights
for African Americans started to decline. However, mass protest became the pre-
ferred tool of many other social movements. Vietnam War protesters marched on
Washington by the hundreds of thousands in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like-
wise, the women’s rights, gay rights, and environmental movements have staged
many mass demonstrations in Washington and other major cities.
Most recently, large-scale demonstrations against Wall Street and interna-
tional organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World
Trade Organization have swept the nation. The “Occupy Wall Street” move-
ment, which started in September 2011, has spread to more than 1,500 cities in
82 nations. Modeling their actions after the nonviolent protests of the civil rights
era, protestors occupy public spaces to make their views known. The Occupy
movement’s slogan “We are the 99%” has drawn attention to income inequality
and helped set the tone for the 2012 presidential election. Conservative activists,
such as those in the pro-life movement, have also used nonviolent protest, sit-ins,
and mass demonstrations. Protests against President Obama’s policies early inCIVIL RIGHTS LEADER MARTIN LUTHER
KING JR. waves to supporters from
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
on August 28, 1963, in Washington,
DC. The March on Washington
drew an estimated 250,000 people
who heard King deliver his famous
“I Have a Dream” speech.