Our strategy in going into Birmingham
was to have daily demonstrations that
dramatized for the nation what was the nature of segregation.
So we'd have a small group going down and picketing
the lunch counter.
We'd have another group that would go to a bank
and they would apply for a job.
And when they didn't get the job,
they'd kneel down in the bank and pray.
So it was a day by day calling attention
to what segregation meant.
NARRATOR: The SCLC and local Civil rights leaders
want a federal law banning segregation nationwide,
and they aim to apply the same protest tactics
here that worked in Montgomery.
But Birmingham is a city under siege ruled
by a strict segregationist, chief
of public safety Bull Connor determined
to foil every move they make.
You can never whip these boys if you don't
keep you in them separate.
I found that out in Birmingham.
You've got to keep the White and the Black separate.
So this was a man who was Defiant and brutal,
and it would eventually create the spectacle of suffering that
would lead to momentous social policy movement
but also strategic changes for King and his people.
NARRATOR: The organizers plan to fill the city's jails
with protesters in the hope that the National
attention will force the Kennedy administration to act.
After three days of sit-ins, there
are more than 300 arrests.
But Bull Connor has a plan to roadblock the demonstrators.
You know, those Kennedy a fan watching that little old Bobby
Sox and his brother depressed, they'd
give anything in the world if we had some trouble here.
If we don't have any trouble, we can beat them at your own game.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: The Birmingham campaign reaches a crisis.
Bull Connor and the segregationist politicians
get an injunction against marching.
Once you issue an injunction, violating
that injunction automatically sends you to jail.
And your sentence can be pretty arbitrary,
and it's up to the judge.
NARRATOR: With the injunction in place,
Bull Connor skyrockets bail amounts for protesters,
draining organizers funds so fast
that they can't keep their promise
to bail everyone out quickly.
We had a delegation of the Black business community.
That was under extreme pressure, and they actually asked Dr.
King and all of us to leave.
And they said, look, Birmingham is too tough.
This nonviolence is not working.
That was the thing that threatened
to kill the movement.
NARRATOR: Short on funds and facing pushback
from local leaders, momentum for the Birmingham campaign
grinds to a halt.
The movement is imploding, northern media
are going back to New York and they're
going back to Washington.
They realize that they have to do
something that is going to capture
the attention of the country.
So it has to be something that is different.
It has to be something that people just wouldn't expect
to see or that people would be so shocked that they
had no choice but to act.
That's when the discussions began
about whether to allow school aged kids to be involved.
DR LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR: There are all kinds of reasons
for why using children in a campaign like this
would be a powerful idea.
Media from all over the globe is going to cover a March that
is made up of children, but also they
understood what it would mean to see children
facing abuse on television.
That would be something that even
complacent or moderate people wouldn't
be able to turn away from.
The idea of it being a Children's Crusade
is a dramatic way to look at it.
But in the South, you're not a child at 15.
You can go to jail you can get beaten up,
you know that you get arrested.
So on one side, you had segregation
training you to accept oppression and be humble
and allow yourself to be pushed around on the other side you
had parents who were teaching you
how to stand up and be free.
Without doing anything illegal and without getting killed.
JONATHAN RIEDER: The young people will start marching
and bring Birmingham to its knees.
Robert Kennedy calls King and says,
we can't afford to have young people hurt, call this off.
We don't want you to do this.
And King says in an irate voice, Black children
are hurting every day.
The next day, the young people burst out the doors
of 16th Street Baptist Church.
And now, Bull Connor has lost it.
And he deploys the hoses and the dogs
and that is the turning point.
DR LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR: It's awful to see
an adult hosed down or attacked by a dog
or beaten with a baton.
It's a completely different thing
to see a nine-year-old hosed down and really a nine-year-old
who doesn't comprehend.
That is a powerful message that gets sent out to the world
and it's one unsurprisingly that the world
reacts to in horror and shame.
And it reengagement with these movements.
Those images, they are seared into the nation's brain.