Bull Connor - Civil Rights Era

Civil Rights Era

Before returning to office in 1956, Connor quickly resumed his heavy-handed approach to dealing with perceived threats. One prominent instance came, when a meeting at the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth's house with three Montgomery ministers was raided, with Connor fearing that a spread of the bus boycott that had succeeded in Montgomery was imminent. The ministers were arrested for vagrancy, which did not allow a prisoner bail, nor any visitors during the first three days of their incarceration. A federal investigation followed, but Connor refused to cooperate.

Shuttlesworth had been frequently in danger in the previous two years, having seen his church bombed twice. He, his wife and a white minister were also attacked by a mob after attempting to use white restrooms at the local bus station.

In 1960, Connor was elected Democratic National Committeeman for Alabama, soon after filing a lawsuit against The New York Times for $1.5 million, for what he said was insinuating that he had promoted racial hatred. Later dropping the amount to $400,000, the case would drag on for six years until Connor lost a $40,000 judgment on appeal. In November 1962, Birmingham voters changed the city's form of government, with the mayor now working with nine councilmen instead of three county commissioners. The move had been in response to the extremely negative perception of the city (which had been derisively nicknamed "Bombingham") among outsiders. The most prominent example of this continuing embarrassment came in 1961 when the president of the city's Chamber of Commerce was visiting Japan, only to see a newspaper photo of a Birmingham bus engulfed in flames.

Endorsed by the Governor of Alabama, Connor attempted to run for mayor, but lost on April 2, 1963. Bull and his fellow commissioners then filed suit to block the change in power, but on May 23, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled against Connor's position, ending his 23-year tenure in the post. Birmingham had voted to change from a commission form of government to a mayor-council form of government. Connor, citing a general law, contended that the change could not take effect until the October 1 following the date of the election, but the Supreme Court of Alabama held that the general law was preempted by a special law applicable only to the City of Birmingham.

The day after the April election, civil rights leaders, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began "Project 'C'" (for "confrontation") in Birmingham against the police tactics used by Connor and his subordinates (and, by extension, other Southern police officials). King's arrest during this period would provide him the opportunity to write his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. The goal of this movement was to cause mass arrests and subsequent inability of the judicial and penal systems to deal with this volume of activity. One key strategy was the use of children to further the cause, a tactic that was criticized on both sides of the issue. The short-term effect only increased the level of violence used by Connor's officers, but in the long term the project proved largely successful, as noted above.