In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was the most segregated city in the country. The schools, restaurants, and movie theaters that whites went to blacks couldnít go to. Because of that people started having marches and started having sit-ins. Thousands of civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham were attacked by some of ìBullî Connorís policemen in the spring of 1963. Bull Connor was the Birmingham police commissioner. There were marches and protests were organized. During one of them Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested and put in jail. He also wrote a famous ìLetter from the Birmingham Jail.î King wrote, ìI guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But he said, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor." He meant freedom would never be given to blacks by the whites so they had to fight for it.

    Children begged for weeks to be allowed to march with the civil rights demonstrators. Then finally they were allowed to march. On the second of March 1963, 1,000 young people marched bravely through the police dogs and fire hoses in the city center. On Connorís order 900 of them were arrested. The next day over 2,500 young marchers turned out to protest.

    The police put clubs, dogs, and firehoses on the marchers. Young blacks were put in jail while the rest of America watched on TV and read in the newspapers. Because everybody was telling them that it was wrong, whites were forced to end segregation.