A DANGEROUS BUSINESS: CHILDREN ON THE FRONT LINES

THE CONTROVERSIAL DECISION TO INCLUDE CHILDREN IN BIRMINGHAM'S CIVIL RIGHTS PROTESTS MET WITH ALARM FROM SOME, ELATION FROM OTHERS. BUT IN THE END, IT BROKE THE BACK OF SEGREGATION IN THE CITY.

BEFORE WALKING OUT OF SEGREGATED Center Street Elementary School on the hot spring morning of May 2, 1963, Audrey Hendricks approached Miss Wills, her third-grade teacher. When the child respectfully declared that she would not be remaining in class that day, Miss Wills stared at her and then burst into tears. Audrey was the only child in her class who had decided to take part in what had been dubbed by organizers as "D-Day." Miss Wills was filled with pride for Audrey, and for what the nine-year-old was about to do. She dismissed the child from class with a nod and a smile.

Standing alone on the school's dusty front lawn, Audrey paused, listening to the quiet. Then she broke into a run, quickly covering the two blocks that separated the school from her family's modest Titusville home. Her parents were waiting. Without any discussion, Audrey climbed into the back of her parent's Chevrolet and the three drove eastward, toward downtown Birmingham.

Audrey's mother, Lola Hendricks, would not take part in the protests, but only because she was too important behind the scenes. Lola and her husband Joe were among the earliest supporters of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who for a decade had been a vocal opponent of segregation in the city. Now, after years of frustration, the national spotlight was suddenly on Birmingham and its intransigent white leadership. Shuttlesworth and the Hendricks were relishing the moment.

Across town, Alan Drennen considered the civil rights protests taking place downtown with a mixture of anger, admiration, and dread. just a month earlier, Alan and a group of fellow white moderates were elected to Birmingham's newly created city council. But the council and the city's new mayor, had yet to take their seats. Instead, they remained tangled in a legal battle with supporters of the city's outgoing, three-member city commission. Indeed, the most prominent and most notorious member of the commission, Eugene "Bull" Connor, remained firmly in control of the city's police and fire departments. For weeks, police had been rounding up a steadily growing stream of civil rights protestors, with little violence. But that was about to change.

LOLA HENDRICKS WAS BORN ON Birmingham's Southside in 1932. Her mother was a cook; her father delivered coal. She remembers vividly the blatant banners of segregated Birmingham: the labels on water fountains, the whites-only parks and swimming pools, the dividing line on city buses. For much of her childhood, she had only the rarest interaction with whites.

One of those moments came when Lola was nine, on a segregated city bus. She was riding with her mother, and as the bus approached downtown, the seats filled up, leaving standing room only. Finally, the driver put the bus in park and came down the aisle. he halted in front of Lola and her mother, who were seated at the front of the colored section. "Y'all need to get to the back of the bus," he instructed. Lola's mother obediently stood up and told her daughter to do the same. Later that day, Lola asked her mother why they had to surrender their seats. "She told me, 'That is the way the law is. They don't want whites and blacks to be together.'" As she grew older, Lola noticed other times when her parents submitted to the instructions of whites. "I never could accept that," she said.

While Lola's family struggled to make ends meet, Alan was growing up comfortably on the slopes of Redmont Park. As a young boy in the early 1930s, Alan shared the experience of many prosperous white children in the city: he had a black playmate, the offspring of a neighbor's domestic worker. But he also vividly remembers his grandparents admonishing him about the interracial relationship. "It affected my life," Alan said in a recent interview.

By 1960, Alan was a successful insurance broker. But he was disturbed about Birmingham's lack of progress. A decade earlier, Birmingham and Atlanta were of nearly equal size. But Atlanta's reputation as a forward-looking city had led to phenomenal growth, while Birmingham was stagnating. Aside from the fourteen-story municipal building, not a single new downtown skyscraper had risen in Birmingham in thirty years. There was no doubt in Alan's mind that the city's leadership and the city's troubling record of racial violence were holding it back.

In 1962, Alan joined his brother-in-law, Roy Kracke, and lawyer David Vann in the successful petition drive to change the city's form of government from a three-member commission to a mayor and nine-member council. Alan also began holding informal gatherings of blacks and whites in his home to discuss the city's future. When council elections were set for the spring of 1963, Alan became a candidate.

As a council hopeful, Alan did not advocate dismantling Birmingham's segregation laws; no white candidate did. But Alan did take the relatively radical position of supporting the hiring of black policemen. During the campaign, he and other moderate candidates were the subject of smear sheets and maligned as "race-mixers," communists, and puppets of the "Negro bloc." At home, Alan and his family endured a series of profanity-laced, threatening phone calls. But on April 2, city voters chose a more progressive course, rejecting Connor's mayoral bid in favor of Albert Boutwell and a group of moderate council hopefuls.

Lola, meanwhile, had graduated from Parker High School and finished two years at Booker T. Washington Business College. She married and went to work. But she and Joe were frustrated with the lack of opportunities for blacks in the city. In 1955 they were galvanized by reports about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The following year, Shuttlesworth brought his fledgling Birmingham civil rights organization, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, to the Hendricks's church for an organizational meeting. The couple signed on.

Lola rose swiftly in the ACMHR, becoming recording secretary. In the fall of 1962, Lola helped Martin Luther King Jr.'s Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference plan its convention in Birmingham. In January 1963, the SCLC and the ACMHR agreed to prepare a nonviolent, direct-action campaign to force the dismantling of Birmingham's segregation laws. If segregation could be successfully challenged in Birmingham-one of the most segregated cities in the nation-it most certainly would not stand in the rest of the South. Organizers named the campaign "Project C," short for "confrontation."

Lola assisted King's staff as they arrived for the joint campaign in early spring, 1963. She met with prominent black businessman A. G. Gaston and arranged for office space for King and his staff at the Gaston Motel, a block north of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Specifically, Lola was assigned to King's chief of staff, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, the architect of Project C. Lola put Walker in touch with important contacts in the city and advised him on sites that Project G should target.

Project G's street protests were supposed to begin before Easter, in hope of disrupting downtown merchants' important spring shopping season. But wary of swinging voters to Connor's mayoral campaign, organizers postponed the launch until the day after the election.

From Washington, D.C., President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were watching the developments in Birmingham. On the morning of April 3, they asked Burke Marshall, the justice Department's civil rights chief, to try to call off the protestors. The Kennedys wanted King and Shuttlesworth to give the city's newly elected leadership a chance. But there would be no more waiting.

At midday Lola Hendricks took a lunch break from her secretarial job at the black-owned insurance firm, Alexander & Co., and walked to the Gaston Motel, where Shuttlesworth, the Rev. Martin Luther King, and other protest leaders had their base of operations. "You're here just in time," King told her. "I need a permit to march downtown." he asked Lola to walk down to City Hall and get one. King sent a local minister along with her for support. "If they won't give you a permit, don't talk back to them. just come on back," King said.

That afternoon, Lola and the minister entered City Hall. She was supposed to let him handle the request for a permit. But when they arrived at the reception area for the city commission, the minister froze. So Lola asked the receptionist: "May I speak to Commissioner Connor?" A man standing behind the desk turned to face her. "You're lookin' at him." Lola responded, "Commissioner Connor, we are here to ask you for a permit to march downtown." Connor shot back: "I'll march you over to the jail, that's where I'll march you."

Five establishments were targeted for sit-ins that day: Pizitz, Loveman's, Kress, Woolworth's, and Newberry. Police made twenty arrests-hardly a result that would "fill the jails to overflowing" as organizers had promised. But it was a start.

On April 10, a state judge declared the daily protests illegal. King decided to march on. A photograph from that day shows the three pastors: Shuttlesworth, King, and fellow Georgian Ralph Abernathy leading the protest. all three were arrested. Shuttlesworth quickly made bail so he could continue the demonstrations. Abernathy and King stayed behind bars to draw attention to the campaign. During their internment, a group of local white clergy criticized the protestors for taking their concerns to the streets instead of seeking relief through negotiation or the courts. King's thoughtful and impassioned response, written over several days on toilet tissue and in the margins of The Birmingham News, became his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."

During King's incarceration, the campaign lost steam. On April 20, King and Abernathy made bail so they could rejoin the demonstrations. But by the end of the month, protest leaders were pondering how to maintain momentum. On April 29, the Rev. James Bevel, a fiery orator and close advisor to King, stepped forward with an extraordinary idea: recruit schoolchildren to join the street protests. As Bevel figured, a children's protest would draw the national attention organizers craved. King wasn't sure, but Bevel pressed ahead. The first "youth march" was set for May 2. Bevel dubbed it "D Day."

IT WAS ON THE EVENING OF MAY 1 THAT little Audrey Hendricks decided to march. For weeks she had attended the mass church meetings with her parents and watched others step forward to join the street protests. The day before, one of her best friends, who was a year older, joined the marchers. "I decided I needed to take a stand," Audrey recalled.

Lola was surprised by her daughter's decision. But Audrey eloquently explained that if her parents were going to be involved in the movement, then she should be involved, too. Her mother couldn't argue with the logic, but she told Audrey that it would be up to her to explain it to her grandparents. The morning of D-Day, after Audrey left Miss Wills's class, the Hendricks visited with Lola's parents. Audrey told them what she planned to do. "My mother and father were very frightened," Lola recalled, "but they knew it was the right thing to do."

That day, some two thousand protesters filled the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the largest group ever. Outside, police formed their usual roadblocks on the routes from the church to City Hall and the downtown shopping district, but the size of the crowd prompted calls for reinforcements. As the students filed out of Sixteenth Street Baptist two by two, sheriffs deputies and fire trucks joined the police lines. Authorities spent much of the afternoon filling paddy wagons and school buses to capacity with children, some as young as six.

Audrey was among those arrested that afternoon. Emerging with her fellow marchers from the basement of the church, she crossed Sixth Avenue North before police stopped her and directed her to a paddy wagon. With the jail already full-as many as seventy-five students were packed into cells built for eight-Audrey's group was carted off to juvenile Hall. There, Audrey was interrogated by three plainclothes policemen before being allowed to join her fellow detainees. Some of the questions posed to Audrey-were her parents communists, for example-she didn't quite understand. She spent the next five days at juvenile Hall, a place that felt more like school than prison. The students ate bologna sandwiches, cafeteria-style, and played in a fenced courtyard. They spent the rest of their time enjoying board games, including one of Audrey's favorites, Operation, which the Hendricks dropped off for her. Lola phoned the complex daily to check on her daughter, and Audrey was allowed to call home periodically.

In Washington, the administration continued to tread carefully. Robert Kennedy called the use of children "a dangerous business" but said the situation remained a local matter. King, however, recognized that the day's events represented a stunning reversal of fortunes. With police rounding up unarmed children, national sympathy was bound to shift to his side. The arrests also were unifying the local black community in support of the protests. That night, King spoke to an overflow meeting at Sixteenth Street Baptist. "We are not alone in this," he said. "Now yesterday was D-Day, and tomorrow will be Double-D Day!"

The next morning, some fifteen hundred students skipped school. With the jail and other facilities filled to capacity, Connor did not want to arrest the day's protesters; he wanted them dispersed and pushed away from the downtown business district. At the corner of Fifth Avenue North and Seventeenth Street, police and firemen with hoses formed a line, with trucks and buses behind them. Shortly after 1:00 P.M., as the first group of about sixty schoolchildren approached, the order came down from Connor. Despite strong reservations, the firemen turned on the hoses. A few students tried to hold their ground, and firemen brought the hoses up even closer. When that failed to move them, the firemen deployed their "monitor guns," fearful devices resembling large machine guns on tripods. The monitor guns forced water from two hoses through a single nozzle with extraordinary force. "It was a moment of baptism for the civil rights movement," wrote Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, his authoritative history of the movement's early days.

The use of hoses enraged black bystanders who had been gathering for weeks at the edge of Kelly Ingram Park to watch the protests. They began to throw bottles and rocks. Meanwhile, protestors continued to file out of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Afraid of completely losing control, police commanders consulted with Connor. They decided to deploy a new weapon: eight K-9 units.

Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson, shooting with a camera concealed under his coat, caught on film Walter Gadsden, a lanky Parker High School student, with a German shepherd snapping at his chest. Gadsden had not intended to get involved in the demonstrations; he was related to the prosperous family who owned the Birmingham World, a local black weekly that frowned on the demonstrations and refused to publish King's name on its front page. On the other end of the leash was Officer Dick Middleton, a soft-spoken son of a crane operator with a passion for cooking. That day, Gadsden and Middleton were unlikely characters thrust together in one of the iconic images of the civil rights movement.

Alan Drennen, like many whites in Birmingham, stayed away from downtown during the height of the violence, but he watched the events unfold on television. he opposed the student protests, but was amazed by the students' fearlessness. he worried that children were being used-and put in harm's way-without understanding the danger. More than anything, Alan was filled with sorrow about how Birmingham would be viewed across the country and beyond.

Lola and Audrey Hendricks recall very different feelings. Neither remembers being frightened during the clashes. On the contrary, Lola was enthralled; after years of disappointment, the injustices in Birmingham were finally being recognized. History was being made, and her family was a part of it. Audrey, too, remembers being more excited than scared.

Over the next week, President Kennedy dispatched federal negotiators to the city, raising the profile of the protests even higher. At the city fairgrounds, hundreds of detained students were exposed to the elements. Parents tossed candy bars and blankets over the fences to their rain-sodden children. Back at Kelly Ingram Park, the street conflicts continued. Shuttlesworth was knocked unconscious during one march when the spray from a monitor gun threw him against a wall. While he recuperated in the hospital, King and white business leaders quietly began to forge an agreement during late night negotiations.

On Friday afternoon, May 10, close to two hundred reporters, some from as far away as Scandinavia and the Soviet Union, filled the courtyard at the Gaston Motel. King, Shuttlesworth, and Abernathy took their seats at a white metal table. "The City of Birmingham has reached an accord with its conscience," Shuttlesworth proclaimed. he outlined a four-point agreement that would desegregate lunch counters, rest rooms, and drinking fountains over ninety days. The deal included the release on bond of all protestors, improved job opportunities for blacks, and plans for interracial dialogue.

The following night, more than a thousand hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally at Moose Club Park, between Birmingham and Bessemer. Meanwhile, the Rev. A. D. King, the lesser-known brother of the civil rights movement's most famous spokesman, settled into bed in the parsonage of the First Baptist Church of Ensley following the night's mass meeting. At 10:45 P.M., a bomb exploded, filling the home with smoke. While King and wife Naomi guided their five children out the back door, a second bomb went off. By the time police declared the area free of explosives, more than a thousand black sympathizers had gathered. As A. D. King pleaded for calm, there was a distant boom. This time it was the Gaston Motel. Four were injured when a bomb exploded in the hotel's reception area. It was an attempt to hurt Martin Luther King, but he had left for Atlanta. More than two thousand blacks swiftly congregated, many of them emerging from nearby taverns. Bricks and rocks flew, and a car and grocery store were torched.

Just as things began to quiet down, a contingent of 250 state troopers and irregular volunteers appeared, led by the erratic Colonel Al Lingo. His forces rushed the crowd with clubs. The assault triggered even more violence as enraged blacks took their revenge. By dawn, a half-dozen businesses, an apartment building, and dozens of cars were destroyed. Nearly seventy people were injured, including King aide Wyatt Walker and his wife. ACMHR historian Glenn Eskew later described the night's violence as the first urban riot of the 1960s.

When Lola and Joe Hendricks heard of the motel bombing, they rushed downtown with Audrey in tow. But as they drove closer and saw fires burning, they turned around. "It was a dangerous situation. We got out of there," Lola said.

The next morning, Martin Luther King flew back to Birmingham. In Washington, the Kennedys conferred with the Justice Department's Marshall, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and Army leaders. They agreed to move federal troops to outside the city. If the just-announced agreement in Birmingham crumbled, similar riots could take place in other cities, the Kennedys feared. But the peace held.

Three days later, Shuttlesworth rose from bed, where he had remained since collapsing from exhaustion at the Gaston Motel press conference. Martin Luther King was gone, and had taken much of the press with him. At that night's mass meeting, Shuttlesworth was back in form. "I have just about de-bulled ol' Bull!" he proclaimed. On May 23, the state Supreme Court finished the job, ruling in favor of the mayor-council form of government and ordering commissioners to vacate their offices immediately. "This is the worst day of my life," Connor said. But Birmingham's most vocal segregationist would soon bounce back, winning a seat on the state Public Service Commission.

For Alan Drennen and the city council, it was a time of new beginnings. Within a few days, the council authorized Mayor Boutwell to appoint a special committee to examine fundamental issues facing the city. It was the first serious step toward meeting the provisions of the settlement reached with black leaders. In June, the segregation signs over Birmingham water fountains were removed. On June 11, Wallace made his stand in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama. But he was eclipsed that night by President Kennedy, who appeared on national television to call for sweeping civil rights legislation. "Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise," the president said. "The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them." It would be more than a year before Congress would approve the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By then, Kennedy was dead.

On July 23, 1963, the council repealed the city's segregation laws. A week later, one of the most visible bastions of Jim Crow faded quietly away as groups of blacks sat down and dined, without incident, at downtown lunch counters.

Sadly, racial violence in Birmingham did not end. In September, Shuttlesworth accompanied Floyd and Dwight Armstrong to Graymont School, where they became the first two black students to enroll successfully in a white city school. Twice that month, bombs struck the home of Arthur Shores, a black lawyer who had argued many of ACMHR's court cases; a melee following the second bombing left a black man dead. Then, on a pleas- ant Sunday morning, a bomb rocked the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four little girls.

Alan recalls that many Birmingham residents felt shame about the violence that shook Birmingham in 1963. But many did not. In the following years, he and other council members continued to receive threats as they worked through the challenges of integration, including the trailblazing appointment of Shores to a vacant council seat in 1965. Alan left the council in 1969.

Lola Hendricks continued to advance the cause of integration. In late 1963 she became the first black employee in the Social Security Administration's Birmingham office. She ultimately retired from the agency.

Audrey Hendricks, too, helped push the city forward, as part of the first integrated class at Ramsay High School. Audrey and other black students sat in the school's auditorium for two weeks before being allowed to enter class. "There were fights, there was resentment. It took a while for whites and blacks to work together. But it was what we fought for," Audrey said.

Lola Hendricks and Alan Drennen both look back on 1963 with mixed emotions. Certainly, it was a time of dreadful violence, they said. But it was also a time of tremendous progress. "I see it as a period of renewed hope for the city, a period of real change," Alan said. "We were breaking down barriers," Lola said. "I know Birmingham is a much better place because of the movement."

Copyright University of Alabama Press Fall 2003
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