Birminghamsouthern heartland

As with many other major cities in the South, Birmingham was at the center of some of the Civil Rights Movement’s most notable setbacks and achievements memorialized in the city’s Civil Rights Institute. Sit-ins and protests during the monumental movement led by Reverend Fred Shuttleworth with help from Martin Luther King, Jr. sparked the desegregation of public facilities in Birmingham and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Known as the Birmingham campaign, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference harnessed the power of the city’s direct action protest and essentially inspired the city and the nation to question the segregation way of life. This is also the period when King composed his Letter From Birmingham Jail urging, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”