Comeback Town: Birmingham prepared for battle

This is an opinion column

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Today’s guest columnist is James L. Baggett

The story of the 1963 Birmingham civil rights demonstrations, and the brutal response from Birmingham officials has been told many times and often told well.

But missing from these accounts is an explanation for why and how Birmingham acquired police dogs, armored cars, and firefighters trained in riot control.

In the fall of 1959 the city’s public safety commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor picked up a copy of Reader’s Digest magazine and read an article about police dogs in London, England.

When Connor read the Reader’s Digest article, the Brown decision desegregating schools and the Montgomery Bus Boycott were recent events, and like other white supremacist leaders, Connor understood that preserving racial segregation would require battles in the courts and in the streets.

He needed new weapons, and acquiring dogs would be step one.

The Baltimore Police Department was the leader in the use and training of dogs, and Connor sent officers there to learn about the program and sent Birmingham’s first K-9 officer, Sargent M. W. McBride and his dog “Rebel” for training. Over the coming months, five more officers joined the K-9 corps.

The dog handlers had to meet specific criteria, including being under 32-years-old, physically fit, having an affinity for dogs, and must be married (preferably with children). The dogs lived at home with their handlers and while trained to maul a suspect, the dogs were portrayed to the public as gentle family pets when off duty.

Connor recognized the public relations value of his new K-9 corps and had himself photographed with the dogs. The handlers demonstrated their dogs for groups of school children and church groups who toured city hall. They visited schools and Connor made sure that powerful and influential members of the white community saw the dogs in person and in action.

He sent the dogs and their handlers to meetings of Civitan Clubs, Rotary, Kiwanis, and other groups. When his schedule permitted, Connor liked to accompany the dog handlers on these visits.

In addition to police dogs, Connor recognized an untapped source of additional personnel in the Fire Department. In March 1960, Connor announced that all Birmingham firefighters would undergo “riot training.”

He told reporters that he was taking this action in response to racial unrest in other cities. In an emergency, Connor said, Birmingham’s 433 firefighters could combine with the city’s 450 police officers to form the largest police force in the South.

For the final step in Connor’s plan, he acquired two armored cars (often described incorrectly as “tanks”). In March 1960, two police officers traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi to arrange for the transport of the military surplus World War II era armored utility cars to Birmingham. Built by Ford Motor Company between 1943 and 1945, the armored cars had bulletproof glass windows, and with six-wheel drive could reach a top speed of 55 miles per hour.

Each vehicle could carry four officers, including the driver. Originally a machine gun was mounted on the vehicles, but these had been removed. Each vehicle had eight small portholes through which the officers inside could fire shotguns. The two vehicles were taken to Birmingham on flatbed trucks, and then modified and painted white at the city garage.

Connor was confident that he had created an armed force that could crush any civil rights protests. He was wrong because he did not understand the nature of the nonviolent demonstrations he was about to face.

When Birmingham’s civil rights campaign began on April 3, 1963, it began just as Connor and other Birmingham whites had expected, with lunch counter sit-ins at downtown stores.

Between April 3 and May 8, when movement leaders suspended the protests in response to concessions from white Birmingham businessmen, two civil rights organizations, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, led by Birmingham pastor Fred Shuttlesworth, and the Southern Leadership Conference, led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., staged at least 21 sit-ins at downtown department stores and other locations; two sit-ins at the downtown Birmingham Public Library; and at least six instances of picketing outside stores and other locations.

Over four consecutive Sundays in April and May, small groups of African Americans conducted kneel-ins, visiting churches with all-white congregations and asking to be admitted and allowed to participate in the services.

The Birmingham campaign is most associated with large street protests. There were 11 of these, some small in size but some including hundreds of protestors and by-standers.

Over the course of the demonstrations, the dogs were deployed at least six times and unleashed on demonstrators and bystanders four times. Connor first ordered the use of dogs on April 7, when police used them to disperse bystanders watching a Palm Sunday march.

Connor did not order the use of dogs again until May 3, the second day of the phase of the campaign known as the Children’s Crusade. By this stage of the demonstrations there were too many demonstrators to arrest so Connor hoped to drive them from the streets.

Far from controlling the demonstrations, the dogs—surrounded by crowds of people, bombarded by the sounds of sirens, high pressure hoses, and people screaming—introduced an added level of chaos.

So many people were bitten by the dogs that one African American physician, whose office was near the site of the demonstrations, earned the nickname “Dog Bite Doctor” for treating so many demonstrators and bystanders.

When the dogs performed as they were trained, their presence frightened some demonstrators, especially children, who ran away. But many demonstrators stood their ground against the dogs. And some black bystanders taunted and attacked the dogs.

Fire units with hoses were deployed during the final six days of the demonstrations, often several times in a single day, for a total of 42 times. On some occasions the hoses were deployed but not used.

The fire hoses were equally ineffective. There were two objectives behind the use of fire hoses, to break up groups of demonstrators and cause them to flee the scene, and to block demonstrators’ advance and confine them to a specific area.

Neither of these things worked consistently. The water caused pain and injuries, including fractured bones. But rather than breaking and running, many demonstrators held onto one another, held onto buildings and other stationary objects, and absorbed the painful impact of the water with their bodies. Others retreated, but often just out of range of the hoses. Some people danced in the spray and taunted the firemen.

The armored cars were less effective than the dogs and hoses. There is no definitive record of how many times the cars were deployed, and protestors and bystanders did sometimes flee from the street to the sidewalk when one of the armored cars approached. The loudspeakers atop the vehicles allowed the officers inside to issue orders and call out specific individuals.

But the cars are also seen in photographs and film footage of the demonstrations parked along a curb, with small crowds of African American adults and children—people clearly not intimidated by the car’s presence—curiously studying the vehicles from a few feet away.

The dogs, hoses, and armored cars were not effective in the way that Bull Connor and much of white Birmingham wanted them to be. They did not stop the demonstrations, and they did not prevent desegregation.

But their use was recorded by photographers and film crews and have become some of the most impactful and recognizable images of American history, images that resonate with people throughout the world.

James L. Baggett is a writer and historian. From 1997 until his retirement in 2023, he served as Archivist for the Birmingham Public Library and Archivist for the City of Birmingham. He can be reached at BirminghamBaggett@gmail.com.

David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).

Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com