Martin Luther King Jr.’s High-Stakes Gamble in Birmingham
Subject
The significance of the Birmingham campaign in the civil rights movement
Description
“In “You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live,” Paul Kix brings cinematic flair to the story of the civil rights leader’s risky 1963 campaign to integrate the city.
In the spring of 1963, the civil rights movement, weakened and in need of a victory, decided to march straight into what was then the monstrous maw of American racism, Birmingham, Ala.
Little had changed for Black people in the nearly 10 years since Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine in public education. After the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, Black Americans once again found themselves relegated to the back of the bus. The Freedom Rides of 1961 had desegregated interstate busing but divided the movement, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference had failed in its recent attempt to desegregate Albany, Ga.
Creator
Jefferson Cowie
Source
Publisher
The New York Times
File
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