Poorly Timed Protest

To most Birmingham Negroes, just beating the city's tough police commissioner, Theophilus Eugene ("Bull") Connor, in his bid for mayor seemed a major triumph. It was the Negro vote that gave former Lieutenant Governor Albert Boutwell a narrow margin of victory in the April 2 election. Connor had become such a symbol of the nightstick solution to race problems that local Negroes felt certain that they could deal more successfully with Boutwell, even though he is a segregationist too.

But the day after the election, into Birmingham came the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., hero of the 1956 bus boycott in Montgomery. Without consulting most of the Birmingham Negro leaders, King announced that "Birmingham is the most thoroughly segregated big city in the U.S. today," said that he would lead demonstrations there until "Pharaoh lets God's people go." Specifically, he demanded creation of a biracial commission, fair hiring practices, amnesty for previously arrested demonstrators, an end to lunch-counter and other segregation.

Reverting to Form. At first, King had trouble mustering any sizable group of Negro troops. When his demonstrators did show up some owners quietly closed their downtown lunch counters, did not even call police. Connor's cops made some routine arrests, but seemed uncommonly gentle about it all.

Predictably, however, King's movement attracted an increasing number of Negroes--and just as predictably, Connor reverted to form. He broke up a march on city hall by ordering mass arrests. "Call the wagons, Sergeant, I'm hungry," barked Bull. Next day he called out his police dogs. A 19-year-old Negro youth took a swipe at one with a clay pipe. The dog turned on the boy, and a crowd of Negroes surged forward, one carrying a knife. It took some 15 cops and their dogs to break up the melee.

Last week Connor and Police Chief Jamie Moore got an injunction against all demonstrations from a state court. King announced that he would ignore it, led some 1,000 Negroes toward the business district. Both King and one of his top aides, the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, were promptly thrown into jail.

Missing the Chance. To many Birmingham Negroes, King's drive inflamed tensions at a time when the city seemed to be making some progress, however small, in race relations. Complained a Birmingham Negro attorney: "The new administration should have been given a chance to confer with the various groups interested in change." A. G. Gaston, a Negro businessman, added: "I regret the absence of continued communication between white and Negro leadership in our city." Said the Rev. Albert S. Foley, a white Jesuit priest who is chairman of Alabama's Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission: "These demonstrations are poorly timed and misdirected." Perhaps the worst part was that the fuss made Bull Connor seem indispensable to many Birmingham residents, just at a time when a court is trying to decide when he must leave office as a result of a city election last fall that abolished the three-man city commission.

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