Events of History.

 

More and more human beings are knowing about the outstanding legacy of Gloria Richardson. She gave courage to human beings in Cambridge, Maryland, and all over the world. Her pushing the bayonet away from one officer while walking down the street was very historic during the 1960's outlining the influential power of black women. She wanted her legacy to uplift black people, and she fulfilled her legacy in enumerable ways. Always heroic, Gloria Richardson used her wisdom and knowledge to defend the human rights of people. She lived to be 99 years, and I heard of her story over three years ago. Her granddaughter is Tya Young, and Tya Young said that she or Gloria never wanted praise or recognition. She was born to express leadership and be a beacon of light for the oppressed. Gloria Richardson led the civil rights movement in Cambridge (on the Eastern Shore of the state of Maryland). "I say that the Cambridge Movement was the soil in which Richardson planted a seed of Black power and nurtured its growth," said Joseph R. Fitzgerald, who wrote a 2018 biography on Richardson titled "The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation." Fighting for housing rights, health care, jobs, and education were actions that Richardson advanced as well. Gloria Richardson always proclaimed the truth that black human beings have every God-given right to use nonviolence and self-defense when it is necessary to do so. She loved her daughters, Donna Orange and Tamara Richardson including her granddaughters Tya Young and Michelle Price. She was our warrior for justice in more ways than one. 

Rest in Power Sister Gloria Richardson.

 

Agriculture has a long history spanning thousands of years. Human beings changed from being hunter gatherers to being part of Agricultual societies. This was a product of intensification and more sedentism. There was the Natufian culture in the Levent and the early Chinese Neolithic culture in China. Many scholars believe that after the last ice age (ca. 11,000 B.C.), much of the Earth became subject to long dry seasons. These conditions caused modern-day agriculture to be born. These conditions caused annual plants to die off in the long dry season leaving a dormant seed or tuber. Many storable wild grains and pulses caused hunter gatherers in some areas to create the first settled villages at that time. 

 

W.E.B. DuBois's legacy is very extensive. He was born in the North in the state of Massachusetts. From an early age, he has grown in his intellectual analysis of black people. He contributed a great deal to sociology with his understanding of Philadelphia, the era of Reconstruction, and other situations. DuBois wanted to refute the pernicious myth that black people were inferior or didn't make magnificent, complex contributions in history. He also lived in a nadir of race relations when black men, black women, and black children were lynched, raped, oppressed, murdered, and suffered pogroms at the hands of white racist terrorists. He studied at the HBCU of Fisk University, Harvard, and overseas in Europe to gather how the world really worked. Opposing nuclear disarmament was part of his life too (Coretta Scott King, Dr. King, the Black Panther Party, Zora Neale Hurston, Marian Anderson, Bayard Rustin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, etc. wanted nuclear disarmament too). W.E.B. DuBois (and Ida B. Wells) gave life and vigor to the NAACP. He became more revolutionary than the leadership of the NAACP by the 1950's.  He fundamentally criticized capitalism, because he believed that it was a system of exploitation, unfairness, and inequality. DuBois was a leader of the Pan-African movement that wanted a political, economic, and social linkage among all people of black African descent worldwide. That is why he lived in Accra, Ghana before he passed away at the age of 93 years old. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired by W.E.B. DuBois' words in a speech that he gave at Carnegie Hall before 1968. DuBois knew about Dr. King too and wrote about him (both exchanged letters of support in 1956 in favor of the Montgomery Bus Boycott). Therefore, we are inspired by the life of W.E.B. DuBois to discover truth plus up for justice and believe in real principles to liberate human beings from oppression.

Rest in Power Brother W.E.B. DuBois. 

As early as March 18, 1947, the racist "Dynamite" Bob Chamblis set off his first bomb in Birmingham in trying to intimidate the black community. Other bombs exploded in the city in trying to stop desegregated housing in the community. The College Hills area of Birmingham was known as "Dynamite Hill." One major organization that fought for liberation in Birmingham was Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Back then, the group's leader was Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The Bethel Baptist Church (the headquarters of the ACMHR) was bombed on December 25, 1956. From 1957 to 1962, there were at least 17 unsolved bombings of African American churches and homes of civil rights leader in Birmingham. That is why the nickname of the city was "Bombingham" Reverend Shuttlesworth and other civil rights activists continue to fight to end oppression in the Deep South. Students in Birmingham organize the 1960 sit ins. Bull Connor resisted it. There was a temporary bus boycott in Birmingham too. The sit in movement existed in Birmingham by April of 1960. Connor and the Klan resisted the movement, and Shuttlesworth was briefly jailed. On April 12, the New York Times carries a page-one withering critique of conditions in Birmingham, entitled “Fear and Hatred Cripple Birmingham.” Racists are angry and caused a libel lawsuit against NY Times for showing the truth. The organization of SNCC was created at a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. The conference was attended by Rev. Shuttlesworth and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who spoke at the conference too). The Mother of SNCC was Ella Baker who wanted grassroots community organizing to be the nucleus of social movements in favor of justice. It is no secret that the Birmingham police worked with the Klan. They worked together with approval by Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor to allow the Klan terrorists to severely beat up Freedom Riders in Birmingham (Charles Person and Jim Peck were almost killed by the terrorist mob). Other Freedom Riders like John Lewis were beaten in Montgomery. 

By November 7, 1961, segregationist Art Hines narrowly defeats moderate Tom King in the election for mayor. The white community in the city has become polarized: reformers vs. segregationists, business community vs. city hall. On November 12, 1961, after city commissioners (including Bull Connor) vote to close city parks rather than desegregate them (effective January 1, 1962), moderates in the business community publish “Some Facts to Face” in the Birmingham News. The statement opposes resistance to desegregation. Terrorism continued. In January 1962, dynamite bombs severely damaged three black Birmingham churches, one of them associated with Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Reverend Shuttlesworth has filed a lawsuit to desegregate public parks, golf courses, the zoo, and public swimming pools; on January 15, a judge rules that those facilities must open to all citizens. By March 2, 1962, Reverend Shuttlesworth was released after 36 days in jail–and accepts a new pastorate in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, Lucius Pitts, president of Miles College, takes on additional leadership in the black community: he initiates a boycott of white businesses downtown to achieve desegregation of drinking fountains, elevators, and lunch counters, and demands the hiring of black clerks. The SCLC wants to fight in Birmingham to liberate people from injustice by May of 1962. They would ally with Shuttlesworth's Alabama Christain Movement for Human Rights. 

In September 1962, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth invited Dr. King to help him desegregate Birmingham. Dr. King accepts the challenge after a three-day retreat near Savannah, Georgia. From September 25-28, 1962, even as a crisis emerges at the nearby University of Mississippi, the SCLC holds its annual convention in Birmingham, including 300 delegates and Dr. King. (At the final session of the SCLC meeting, on September 28, King addressed the group from Hall Auditorium–where he is attacked physically by a young Nazi).  To discourage demonstrations, city leaders temporarily desegregate downtown department stores. (The Whites Only signs reappear after the SCLCers leave town). The showdown continues. George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama by November 6, 1962. He vowed to continue segregation forever, but he failed. There is a new council plus mayor system being approved in Birmingham as a means of trying to neutralize Bull Connor's segregationist control. Bethel Baptist Church was bombed on December 14, 1962.

The year of 1963 would change Birmingham, Alabama forever. By January 10, 1963, at a meeting in Dorchester, South Carolina (near Savannah), SCLC leaders commit to a campaign to desegregate Birmingham. By January 16, 1963, George Wallace was inaugurated as governor of Alabama pledging “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Concurrent with the inaugural observances is a National Conference on Religion and Race (January 14-17), chaired by Benjamin Mays, that brings together 647 Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders. (Dr. King was one of the presenters). This conference was about diverse religious leaders coming together to fight racism. January 17, 1963, was when eleven Birmingham clergy publish a statement in the main Birmingham newspaper that implores the community to desegregate. March 1963 was when Wyatt Tee Walker and James Bevel tutored people on nonviolent resistance. March 5th was when the mayoral election in Birmingham pits Bull Connor against Albert Boutwell and his associate Tom King. No one gets 50% of the vote, so Boutwell and Connor will face one another in an April 2 runoff election. The SCLC again decides to delay activities until the election is decided, preferring to deal with Boutwell rather than Connor. The segregationist rally at Municipal Auditorium in support of Bull Connor existed on March 8. 

By April 2, 1963, the less extreme Albert Boutwell, widely considered to be willing to consider changes to Birmingham’s segregation policies, narrowly defeats Eugene “Bull” Connor in a large-turnout run-off mayoral election, thanks in part to African American voters. However, Connor and his supporters, instead of stepping down, decide to contest the election (contending, in part, that Connor’s elected terms as Commissioner only when his term was up in 1965) so that two functioning rival city governments operate simultaneously in Birmingham for months until the matter is adjudicated; meanwhile, Connor continues to control the local police. Bull Connor acted like Trump in denying democracy. April 4, 1963, was the important "B Day" when the SCLC started to have sit-ins and released the Birmingham Manifesto. The manifesto was mostly ignored. That day, the campaign is launched with a series of mass meetings and sit-ins at Birmingham lunch counters and bus stations, marches on City Hall, direct actions, and the beginnings of a boycott of all downtown merchants. Citizens are encouraged to avoid shopping at downtown stores during one of the busiest shopping periods, the Easter season, until reforms are instituted.

Dr. King spoke to black inhabitants of Birmingham about methods and philosophies of nonviolence, and actions expand over the next week to include sit-ins at the library, “kneel-ins” at churches, and a march on the county building to forcibly register voters. Hundreds are arrested during this week; many whites (and more than a few African Americans) wish that what whom they called “outside agitators” from Atlanta would leave town. Yet, SCLC staff members James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash Bevel, Dorothy Cotton, Andrew Young, and Bernard Lee also provide workshops on nonviolence. On April 6, 1963, the police arrest 45 protesters who are marching on City Hall. The next day, Palm Sunday, police dogs are set loose on a young protester. Meanwhile, daily demonstrations and the economic boycott continue. On Palm Sunday, April 7, 1963, more people are arrested. A 19-year-old protester (who was a teenage kid) Leroy Allen is set upon by police dogs. By April 10, 1963, the city gets an injunction against the demonstration from a judge. Demonstrators are now subject to arrest. 

In response to the protests, Judge W.A. Jenkins, Jr. issued an order preventing Reverends King, Ralph Abernathy, Shuttlesworth, and other civil rights leaders from organizing demonstrations. Dr. King and Abernathy debate whether protesters should continue to submit to arrest; as money available for posting bail runs thin, leaders cannot guarantee that those arrested will be released. Dr. King’s services at a fundraiser to replenish funds are desperately needed, but he feels his credibility might be undermined if he refuses to submit to arrest so he decides to violate the injunction and accept arrest. Divisions are apparent in the African American community. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had no choice but to continue in the movement after the failure of the Albany movement. By April 12, on Good Friday, local clergy (eight of the eleven who wrote on January 17) compose a public letter, published in Birmingham newspapers on April 13, condemning the protests and King’s role in them, and asking Dr. King to call off the demonstrations.

On the same symbolic day, Good Friday the 12th, Dr. King joins the demonstrations and is arrested along with Ralph Abernathy after violating the injunction against protesting, in accordance with the agenda of “Project C,” which had intended that King be arrested on that date all along. While in custody, he begins composing his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” which, among other subjects, justifies his ignoring the injunction. Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail is one of the greatest notes in history refuting the clergy people who opposed demonstrations. The note mentioned that unjust law is no law at all, and that freedom shouldn't be constrained by time. In other words, oppressed people shouldn't wait for liberty to come. Liberty should come ASAP without compromise. Dr. King wrote his note from April 12-20, 1963.  It originally circulates only in mimeographed copies throughout Birmingham before becoming public on April 18 and being distributed more widely (but often in excerpts) later that year through pamphlets from the American Friends Service Committee and periodicals like Christian Century, New Republic, Christianity and Crisis, the New York Post, and Ebony magazine. Part of the letter is even introduced into testimony by Representative William Fitts Ryan (D-NY) and published in the Congressional Record, before King revises and prints it as a chapter of his 1964 memoir Why We Can’t Wait. (Consequently, there are differences in the various versions of Dr. King’s famous Letter). Dr. King wants to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, but his request is denied. Coretta Scott King just given birth to a new child days earlier. She contacted the Kennedy administration, which intervened to get Birmingham officials to let Dr. King to call home. Bail money becomes available, and Dr. King is released from jail on April 20.

The controversial Children's Crusade from the SCLC existed from May 2-5, 1965. SCLC organizer James Bevel had proposed using young children in demonstrations, and he recruited youngsters during the last week of April. So, on May 2, the Children’s Crusade begins. (The decision to use children in the demonstrations is debated at length, Dr. King finally agrees after expressing misgivings). More than 1,000 African American students march into downtown Birmingham, and hundreds of them are arrested. Many of the children arrested are freed on May 3, only to be sent out again to protest and be re-arrested.

When hundreds more gather on May 3 and jails are becoming filled to capacity, Bull Connor directs local officials to use force to halt their demonstrations, causing images of children being blasted by fire hoses and attacked by police officers and dogs to appear on television and in newspapers around the world. Those tactics continue on May 4 and on May 5 (“Miracle Sunday”). The images, published in newspapers and magazines and carried on television, swing public opinion within Birmingham and across the nation. The crooked police and Connor using water hoses and dogs on black children is one of the evilest acts in world history. During the evening of May 5, Dr. King encouraged the parents of children protesters that they will be fine, and they did this for American and for all in the human race. On May 6, 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy has sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to Birmingham to facilitate negotiations between the Senior Citizens Council (SCC, the city’s business leadership) and the black leaders. Fred Shuttlesworth is hospitalized after sustaining injuries from being hit with the full force of a fire hose: demonstrations and marches are continuing. Civil rights activist Dick Gregory, having come in from Chicago to help, is among those jailed. Joan Baez has also arrived in order to encourage demonstrators, along with Guy Carawan; she offers a concert at Miles College on May 5. There is an early May 1963 image of the Parker High School student named Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs.

Despite decades of disagreements, when the photos were released, "the black community was instantaneously consolidated behind King", according to David Vann, who would later serve as mayor of 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." The Washington Post editorialized, "The spectacle in Birmingham ... must excite the sympathy of the rest of the country for the decent, just, and reasonable citizens of the community, who have so recently demonstrated at the polls their lack of support for the very policies that have produced the Birmingham riots. The authorities who tried, by these brutal means, to stop the freedom marchers do not speak or act in the name of the enlightened people of the city." President Kennedy sent Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall to Birmingham to help negotiate a truce. Marshall faced a stalemate when merchants and protest organizers refused to budge.

By May 8, 1963, Dr. King told negotiators that he would accept an interim compromise that grant some of the black leaders' demands while ending demonstrations and trying to make other demands later. Fred Shuttlesworth was angry, because he wasn't present at the negotiations, and he felt that Dr. King should not speak for the black population of Birmingham on his own. Dr. King announced the proposed compromise to the city anyway, but wants demonstrations if negotiations failed. President Kennedy on the same say speak about the developments in Birmingham. On May 10, 1963, Reverends Shuttlesworth, Abernathy, and King join together to read the prepared statement outlining the settlement. Its details include removing “Whites Only” and “Negroes Only” signs in certain venues, a plan to desegregate lunch counters and all downtown stores, the release of jailed protestors, an ongoing program to upgrade black American employment, and the formation of a biracial committee to monitor the implementation of the agreement. Protests were suspended. This victory was not perfect, but it was a significant victory in the Civil Rights Movement. Racists and segregationists wanted revenge. On May 11, 1963, the home of Dr. King's brother, A. D. King, is bombed, and another bomb damages the Gaston Motel, a headquarters for the SCLC leadership. So, President Kennedy ordered 3,000 federal troops into position and prepares to nationalize the Alabama National Guard. KKK Imperial Wizard Robert “Bobby” Shelton addressed a Klan rally to resist integration. Black people in Birmingham later used outright self-defense against white racists. When police went to inspect the motel, they were met with rocks and bottles from neighborhood black citizens. The arrival of state troopers only further angered the crowd; in the early hours of the morning, thousands of black people rebelled, numerous buildings and vehicles were burned, and several people, including a police officer, were stabbed. By May 13, three thousand federal troops were deployed to Birmingham to restore order, even though Alabama Governor George Wallace told President Kennedy that state and local forces were sufficient. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Birmingham to stress nonviolence.

The Birmingham Board of Education announced plans to suspend or expel all students who took place in the recent protests and demonstrations. Meanwhile, Dick Gregory delivers a speech at St. John’s Baptist Church. Medgar Evers offers a televised address on civil rights in Jackson, Mississippi (on May 20). By May 22, the SCLC and NAACP take the Board of Education’s decision to the local federal district court. The judge initially upholds the Board of Education’s decision, only to have the decision reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that same day.

On May 23, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Albert Boutwell’s election as mayor of Birmingham should stand, ousting Bull Connor. A few days later, Dr. King attends a celebratory rally in Los Angeles: his speech concludes with a recitation from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”–“Mine eyes have seen the glory!” By July, Duke begins to perform his “King Fit the Battle of Alabam,” immortalizing the events of Birmingham between Connor and King. August 5th was when Johnny Mathis, James Baldwin, Ray Charles, and Nina Simone are among those who entertain at a free, peaceful, and integrated concert at Miles College in Birmingham. Resistance to progress continued by September 1963. Four months after the Birmingham campaign settlement, someone bombed the house of NAACP attorney Arthur Shores, injuring his wife in the attack. Most Birmingham institutions were desegregated. A Labor Day rally of Klansmen attracts George Wallace and Bull Connor as speakers; and several bombings are pulled off by Klansmen, especially because schools are opening around Labor Day under a judge’s desegregation order. One of the saddest days in American history was on September 15, 1963, when four children were killed when a bomb is set off in Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Bombings continued. The four little black American girls just wanted to worship God, but racists ended their lives. 

Scholars believe that Klans members including FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe were involved in the murder of four little girls. By September 16, 1963, Charles (Chuck) Morgan (who was a white man) criticized many members of the white community its complicity in the segregation policies that resulted in the deaths of the four little girls. “We did it” is his lament. He later publishes A Time to Speak about the incident and spends his career furthering social justice. Dr. King delivered the eulogy of the four little girls at the joint funeral of three of the girls by September 18, 1963. Dr. King (on October 14, 193) returned to Birmingham to demand that the city hire black police officers, and at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church he encourages citizens to demand change, no matter the cost. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. King, James Bevel, Wyatt Tee Walker, Dorothy Cotton, and other human beings were key leaders in the Birmingham Campaign. There is no Civil Rights Act of 1964 without the 1963 Birmingham campaign being a victory. 

By Timothy