(futuristic music) (bell dings) (dramatic music) [Narrator] You've seen the images, heard the stories, and you may think that the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement was all Black, all male, and led by ministers who rallied in 1963 and liberated the city.

There's only one problem.

It's not true.

There was a lot of white people working with us.

I became involved in the Civil Rights Movement before Dr. King and SCOC came into the city.

Students made up the body of, mass body of people who gave the movement its power.

The Miles College students started this movement.

When it came time to choose sides, as it were, in the battle for human rights and dignity, I had to take a stand.

(soft hip hop music) (soft hip hop music continues) I can tell the people of America, don't live here.

White, Black, red, yellow, green.

Not under this.

Life isn't worth living.

[Narrator] What could make a person feel that way about their city, about their life?

Life in Birmingham, as far as I'm concerned, is hell.

[Narrator] How bad was it?

♪ I was young ♪ ♪ But I recall ♪ When I was 13, my brother Joe and a friend of ours, Anthony Bassett, and we were walking alongside Tin Mill Road when a police car approached us, and one of the police officers pointed at Anthony Bassett.

The officer told him, "Nigger, get in the car."

And Anthony obliged and the car drove off.

And some minutes later, the police car came back up and one of the officers told Anthony, "Nigger, get out of the car," pushed him out.

And we looked at Anthony and saw the front side of his pants, and they were wet.

He explained that the police officer had taken him up the road and pulled aside and made him get out of the car and urinate on himself for their amusement.

[Narrator] The force of nature known as the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement started long before 1963.

There had been a fledging Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham for quite some time, led by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, whose courage has never been questioned.

You mean to kill segregation or be killed by it?

But Reverend Shuttlesworth had never been able to get the support of the middle class community in Birmingham.

And so his group, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, while tenacious, did not have that broad base of support necessary to support a movement.

Beginning in actually May of 1961, almost a year before, leadership in Birmingham began to look at how they might get rid of Bull Connor because of what happened with the Freedom Riders when they came here on Mother's Day in 1961 and when they arrived at the Trailways bus station.

[Narrator] The movement in Birmingham developed teeth in 1962, when a group of students, led by a 31-year-old SGA president, and supported by a forward-thinking college president, a fearless chemistry professor, and three upper middle class housewives, created two weapons on the campus of a small, historically Black college called Miles, launched them, brought Birmingham's economic power structure to its knees, and prepared a city for the coming of a King.

Miles College provided some of the really bold and important leadership in the Civil Rights Movement.

[Narrator] It takes three things to have a successful movement.

Courage, wisdom, and understanding the importance of inclusion.

The Miles College Movement had all three.

An example of the kind of courage that it took to work in the movement?

How about risking death to rescue Freedom Riders whose bus was burned in Anniston, then transporting them to Birmingham to continue their journey.

Meet Mr. Nims Bo Gay, respectfully known as Daddy Gay.

Fred said, "We got a call that they burned the bus in Anniston."

Who will go up there with him?

I said, "I'll go."

When we got there, those ladies was all standing around, sitting around, some afraid.

And then that detective asked us, said, "How you gonna carry them back home to Birmingham?"

I said, "We gonna carry them back in (indistinct)."

They said, "Do you have any protection?"

I said, "Oh, we got protection."

They thought we had somebody else, but we was talking about the Lord God Jesus.

And so when we got back to Birmingham and got to 50th Street, Bull Connor was there waiting.

Instead of going 50, we come down, went down 45th.

And when he caught up, we was at Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville, and he drove up behind us and he said, "Well, Reverend," talking to Reverend Shuttlesworth.

Said, "We was intending to escort them here, where they'd be safe."

Shuttlesworth, he was a prison preacher, he said, "You're a damn liar, Bull.

You wasn't intending to do nothing.

You were intending (indistinct) and pretend that you were trying to save them."

[Narrator] After years of stirring the wrath of the Klan and surviving numerous attacks, including having his home bombed twice, a decision was made that surprised many.

Reverend Shuttlesworth, in May of 1961, made the decision to leave Birmingham.

And he accepted the pastorate of a Baptist church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved his family there.

That left a void in the nominal leadership of the Black community.

[Reporter] The hope of the future for the Negroes rests primarily in their young people.

Miles College, staffed by and restricted to Negroes, is one of two such colleges in Birmingham.

(upbeat jazz music) [Narrator] Miles College was founded in 1898 by the CME Church.

Little did its founders know that years later, a change in presidents and a routine layoff at an auto plant would usher in key players who would create the foundation for a movement that would ultimately change the world.

There was a new president of Miles College, Dr. Lucius Holsey Pitts, who was the antithesis of his predecessor at Miles.

Whereas Dr. Bell had expelled students who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Pitts encouraged students to do it and actively supported the efforts of students, such as Frank Dukes, who was president of the student government.

Smart young man.

While I was waiting to get called back to my job, I decided to enroll at Miles College in the summer of 1959.

He was also a veteran and had a lot of more common sense than knowledge than the average student.

In 1961, I was elected student government president.

Dr. Pitts summoned me to his office one day and wanted me, asked me if I would organize the students in a voter registration drive.

At that time, there were less than 8,000 voters in the entire state, Black voters, in the entire state of Alabama.

It was very difficult to register to vote because you had to pass an exam with approximately 100 questions.

And many of these questions were, ran from the ridiculous to the sublime.

For example, there were questions on the test like, "How many bubbles in a bar of soap?"

And if it were a woman taking this exam, there would be questions like, "Have you ever had an abortion?

Have you ever had any stillborn children?"

There would be questions like, "Name all the members of the House of Representatives in Alabama and in the Senate and in the United States Senate and in the United States Congress."

So it was very difficult to register to vote, plus we had to pay poll tax, which at that time was a dollar and a half.

[Voiceover] Foot soldier, Nims Gay, sacrificed and paid it.

Because a voteless person is a hopeless person.

We got involved with the cooperation from the local NAACP office.

And one day in September of 1961, we drove downtown, drove to downtown Birmingham to the courthouse, 160 Miles College students to become registered voters.

And we were all successful in registering to vote except maybe five or 10.

And that inspired many of the people in down, Black folk in the Birmingham community, to become, to try to become registered voters.

[Narrator] And paved the way for the students to put their concerns in writing.

(mellow jazz music) We put together a statement that was called, it was a manifesto, and we named it.

[Narrator] "This We Believe.

The whole history of mankind boldly and brilliantly declares that customs are not permanent, that life is change."

[Voiceover] "We, the students of Miles College."

[Voiceover] "Wanna state clearly and unequivocally that we cannot tolerate in a nation professing democracy and among people professing Christianity, the discriminatory conditions under which the Negro is living today in Birmingham, Alabama."

[Reporter] Birmingham is the largest segregated city in the South.

We listed all of the grievances we had about the segregation and discrimination in Birmingham and in Alabama and in this nation as a whole.

[Voiceover] "Education.

In the public school systems, facilities for Negroes and whites are separate and unequal.

On the university level, the state will pay a Negro to attend a school out of the state rather than admit him to tax supported public institutions."

Mason couldn't go to Alabama School of Law, where I went.

The state of Alabama paid him to go to a college in upstate New York.

[Narrator] Legal legend, J. Mason Davis, remembers.

In order for me to go to law school, I had to leave the state of Alabama.

I got to the second semester of my final year in law school.

The state didn't send me any money.

I was told, "We don't have any money.

State of Alabama's in proration."

So I told the person at the state that I was talking with, that I would go to my school the next day.

I would borrow the bus fair from Buffalo to Tuscaloosa, and I would be in Tuscaloosa in three days at the front door of the University of Alabama School of Law asking to be admitted.

The money from the state was at my house two days later.

(laughs) -Jobs.

-Housing.

-Voting.

-Hospitals.

[Voiceover] Movies and restaurants.

We want our children to grow up and know that they can be free, they can laugh, or they can go and sit here or eat there.

[Narrator] How could a child not be free?

Hezekiah Jackson found out.

We were permitted to start coming downtown because mother was saying that, you know, "If you all want to go to town on your own, you can go.

There's certain places you can't go."

And she would give us a strict protocol.

"When you pass the white people, you are not to look at them."

I wanted a Baby Ruth candy bar.

And I went in and I got the Baby Ruth Candy bar, and they had some little crates, where I saw the white children sitting.

So I said, "Wow, I'll sit here and eat my Baby Ruth."

So I sat down and this white gentleman, if you can call him that, he came over.

So he said, "N, what are you doing?

Your people haven't trained you in the manners?

What you, a savage?

You a baboon?"

And when I got home, I was telling my mother about it.

And she was saying, "You didn't look at him, did you?"

She was frightened.

I said, "But how can he just say that to me and nobody seems to care?"

And she said, "That's just how it is."

[Voiceover] Law enforcement.

Negroes are intimidated, insulted, brutally manhandled by the law enforcement officers and elected officials.

[Narrator] Perhaps because law enforcement.

Had a character named Bull Connor.

He knew his officers were brutal, but that was down his alley.

So he didn't caution them or train them against it, he encouraged them.

[Voiceover] There are no Negro policemen in Birmingham.

I was the first Black, the first African American, to successfully pass the Civil Service Examination to become a police patrolman in Birmingham.

Now we're talking about in the late '50s.

They sent me a letter, asked me to come down for an interview, to be interviewed by Bull Connor.

And they always said Bull had one good eye and he had one glass eye.

And Bull asked me, said, "McPherson, if we hired you as a policeman in Birmingham, would you arrest a white man?"

Now that's what he asked me.

I looked him dead in his eyes.

I said, "Mr. Connor, I would think, that if you hired me as a policeman in Birmingham, my job is to enforce the ordinances and the laws of the city of Birmingham.

And if a white man violated that ordinance of that law, I would put him in jail."

After that, they took my name off the list again.

[Voiceover] We therefore call upon the elected officials of the city, county, and state, all leaders and all people of goodwill, to stand up and be counted.

[Narrator] It was both a declaration of war and a call to action.

(upbeat jazz music) We said we would start a selective buying campaign.

Teaching African Americans to teach their money to have some sense.

Why spend $300 on a new Easter outfit, clothing, at this department store, and they won't allow you to spend 50 cents on a hotdog too?

Escape prosecution for violation of the anti-boycott law, the leaders, including Mr. Dukes, decided to call it a selective buying campaign.

[Narrator] Why did the Miles College movement succeed?

One word, wisdom.

Everybody white is not bad and everybody Black is not good.

[Narrator] The leaders at Miles College had the wisdom to understand that Birmingham's white citizens were victims of segregation too, either by lack of information or fear of certain retaliation.

[Reporter] Reverend Lucius Pitts recently of Atlanta.

What are the facts about education in Birmingham?

That the inadequacy in Negro education would astound the average white man, if he knew it.

[Speaker] Dr. Pitts had a love for this institution and understood the importance of relationships between whites and Blacks in order to grow.

[Narrator] The movement needed a student leader with the sensitivity to empathize and interact with whites while motivating and keeping the respect of Blacks.

But who could be the general of a war powered by intellect -and economics?

-(upbeat jazz music) Nobody in particular wanted to mess with Reverend Frank Dukes.

There are many among us who would like to express our views, but as you stated that some persons feel economic reprisals and that same thing holds true for some members of the white race.

They would like to stand up and be counted, but the same retaliations would be directed upon them also.

So if a man asked me a question, I can speak for myself because I would not be economically depressed because I'm already economically depressed.

(audience laughs) And, so, I feel free in saying just about anything I wish to say.

Frank Dukes, who was an older student, Student Government Association president, who actually engineered the selective buying campaign.

Working with Dr. Jonathan McPherson, they did the research to determine, finally, that white businesses in downtown Birmingham would lose $4 million a week.

The department stores operated on a profit of 15%.

We knew we could cut profit margin from 15% to less than 15%, and most of the downtown stores, the majority of the trade was from Black folk, colored folk as we were called in those days, that those stores would ultimately go out of business.

And we decided that if we would start a boycott, that we would aim it for Easter.

[Voiceover] "Dear Sir.

We are now approaching the Easter season.

It is generally conceded that Negroes spend more than $4 million weekly in the downtown area.

When we consider this large amount of spending on the part of our people and recognize the continuation of discriminatory practices of employment and the racial labels on facilities by the merchants of Birmingham, we are grieved."

We had a committee that we formed to get the boycott started.

Frank Dukes, U.W.

Clemon, Shelley Millender, Walter Meredith, Deenie Drew, Althea Montgomery, and Ruth Barefield-Pendelton.

Dr. Pitts, who was a genius at getting white folk and Black folk together to sit down and talk about these problems.

So Dr. Pitts arranged for our committee to meet with some members of the power structure with the cooperation of Bishop Philip Murray, who was the bishop of the Episcopal district in this area.

And he was located at the Church of the Advent.

So we used to meet, we started meeting with 'em.

And the white power structure, men like, you had Roper Dial, who was the CEO at Sears Global.

Emil Hess, who was the CEO at Parisian.

Sidney Smyer, and also James Head, at the Birmingham Office Supply Company.

We were meeting secretly, and I said secretly because if Bull Connor had known that whites and Blacks were meeting, he would've put all of us in jail.

The Miles students selective buying campaign really did spark some interracial communication for the first time.

Emil Hess, who was president at that time of the Parisian Corporation, he acquiesced that we were being discriminated against, segregated against.

And he agreed that qualified Black people should have jobs according to their talents and abilities in the professional ranks across the board.

The merchants said to us that while they were willing to try to do something, they couldn't because the ordinances of the city require segregation of the facilities.

[Narrator] A confession was made.

They had told us that they couldn't talk to Bull Connor because they were afraid of him like most of the, nearly all of the Black people and most of the white folk.

There was no alternative.

We actually launched the boycott.

(upbeat jazz music) We started printing up thousands and thousands of leaflets.

There was a secretarial department at Miles College.

They had an old memo graphing machine.

You couldn't copy the way they do now.

And they operated that memo graphing machine night and day.

Students from Miles, they were in another world, out in Fairfield.

They managed to come to town.

[Narrator] How?

The Black middle class wives were very supportive of the selective buying campaign because they, to an extent, were more embarrassed by the system than anyone else, because many times when they went to the major department stores and couldn't try on dresses.

And not only could you not try it on, you couldn't take it back.

[Narrator] Who were these housewives, who faced evil head on, while many men ran or hid?

They called us the Den Mothers of Miles College.

We would go out to Miles College, pick up students, take them to every community in Jefferson County, and they would blanket the community with leaflets, urging the citizens not to shop downtown.

And when I say we, there were three ladies.

Deenie Drew, Althea Montgomery, and Ruth Barefield-Pendelton.

There were other ladies doing other things, but we were the three ladies that were working with the students.

They were active with Frank and the people at Miles College before Martin came to town.

Women have made a tremendous contribution to the movement, not just assistance on a (indistinct) but out front.

Althea Montgomery had a master's degree in English from Columbia University.

Deenie Drew.

The thing that was unusual about Deenie was she didn't have to get involved.

She was middle class.

As a matter of fact, in the context of the Black community, she was probably upper middle class.

Her husband was a successful insurance broker and she didn't have to get involved.

But her heart and soul were in the movement and she became a kind of mother figure to a lot of the students.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) We had some students to print up placards and they wore them on their chest and on their backs.

We were on downtown, I believe it was J.J. Newberry or somebody's department store.

Gloria Oliver was arrested with me and we were the first students to be arrested.

I couldn't get into the paddy wagon.

A police officer kicked me into the thing and they took us over to the city jail and we stayed over about six, seven, eight hours.

Mrs. Deenie Drew, and what was the Pastor?

Smith, Reverend Smith, signed our bond.

[Narrator] The Miles College movement had invaluable, and in most cases, secret support from the white citizenry.

(upbeat hip hop music) So the Jewish people resolved that they were gonna help the Black people with these needs, but we were not gonna get any credit for it.

Thank God that there were many white people involved in the movement.

It amazes me how quickly we forget.

There were a lot of white folk who supported us.

Don't let 'em fool ya.

We could not have done it without 'em.

They knew it was the right thing and they wanted to participate.

Some of the best friends I've had in my lifetime have been white, who have helped me in situations when I needed help the most.

[Narrator] And encountered resistance from unexpected sources.

Many of the churches, they didn't welcome us.

In fact, one pastor told his congregation, "Tell that Miles College professor, if he comes to this church again, I'm going to put him in jail."

We had many problems with a lot of the Black school teachers in particular, because they used to dress sharp on the job and they didn't want to stop shopping in downtown Birmingham.

We would go into these stores to make sure that nobody was in there shopping.

They would actually put, sort of put sentries there, to stand and inform people that you really should not buy here.

I was going down the aisle and he, I could see a hat moving on the other side.

So with Upshaw, by the time he turned and I turned, we met each other, and he said, and I said, about the same time I said, say, "We don't shop in here."

And I said, "That's what I'm here for."

He said, (laughs).

However, we had to call it a selected buying campaign because it was against the law to have boycotts in Birmingham and Alabama, period.

We recruited other people to help us to go around and make sure that the selective buying campaign worked.

And it worked.

(upbeat jazz music) After about four weeks of the boycott, the merchants started feeling the pain of their profits margin being cut The movement was very effective.

Stay away from downtown.

Matter of fact, because white folks could spell money, better than they could spell anything else, and they got the word about what the movement meant when in hit 'em in the pocket.

"The Wall Street Journal" reported that in the week leading up to Easter 1962, sales in the downtown stores were down by 40%.

The merchants, after about four weeks, they started crying and they got in touch with Bull Connor and asked him to meet some of our demands.

And Bull Connor told them that he wasn't gonna do a damn thing because all they had to do was wait.

The Negros would be back downtown to shop.

But the colored folk didn't go back downtown to shop.

[Narrator] So Bull retaliated.

We tried to get a permit to collect dimes in the city of Birmingham for books for the library.

Eugene Bull Connor, whoever the man was during that time, denied it.

[Narrator] And even tried to force an end to the boycott by taking away an essential element of survival.

[Reporter] The Birmingham City Commission voted Tuesday to discontinue its support for a surplus food program for needy and indigent persons in retaliation against a Negro boycott of white merchants.

The move to cut off city funds for distributing the federally provided surplus food, which goes mostly to Negro families, was unanimously adopted at the suggestion of Commissioner Eugene Connor.

"I'm cutting off the relief money," Commissioner Eugene Connor said.

"If the Negro leaders come and tell the mayor the boycott is off, then I'm willing to reinstate the money."

[Narrator] But the campaign continued.

After about, between six and eight weeks, Parisians desegregated all their water fountains and toilets, and I believe that Loveman's desegregated all their water fountains and toilets.

The only way that you deal with such an entrenched system, as segregation was, was to adversely affect the economics of that system.

The first thing I did when I went to Loveman's was to go and get a drink of water.

It was through Frank Dukes's leadership that we turned Birmingham upside down.

[Reporter] Miles now had the street cred to expand their assault into the political arena.

[Narrator] It was time for the master stroke, to render it with a delicate deliberation of an artist's brush upon a fragile canvas.

It was time to trap a bull.

(upbeat hip hop music) We notified the press that we were going.

To go downtown and present the city commission with a petition of between eight and 10,000 citizens of Birmingham, mostly Black, who were entreating the city commission to rescind the segregation ordinances of the city.

[Narrator] Why was this news?

How bad was Bull Connor?

(dramatic hip hop music) Bull Connor.

Eugene Bull Connor.

Bull Connor, he was a powerful, evil person.

Bull Connor was a symbol of racial hatred and persecution.

Bull Connor used to say, "You better keep your foot on 'em," and then he said nigger too, "Better keep your foot on them niggers.

Just like a (indistinct).

Put your foot on 'em and they'll strip out money."

I can recall hearing my father and some of the other gentlemen, and I would hear them talking about this Bull, and I didn't know it was a person, about this terrible Bull.

And I was like, "Wow, that Bull is really awful.

I don't ever want to encounter that Bull."

And I would hear daddy and them talking about the Bull, he had a tank, and I was like, "Wow, the Bull can drive."

Because I'm thinking about a bull!

The kind we've seen when we would go to the country in the summertime to Selma to visit my great-grandmother and papa and all of them.

I'm thinking about a bull, where they say, you're not supposed to wear red around.

And so I asked dad about this bull one day.

And so he said to me, he goes, "No, this Bull doesn't dislike red."

He said, "He hates black."

(crowd applauding) [Narrator] And there was a price to pay for bucking Bull and those who shared his sentiments, even among the elite.

There was this Birmingham independent newspaper, supported by the John Birch Society.

And they would, any event that was integrated, like when the NAACP had a meeting here, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, they would be there with their cameras and photographing us and then they would throw them on their neighbor's lawns.

And of course, the inference was that we were communists.

(laughs) (upbeat hip hop music) I became sort of prominent.

They made an attack on my home, they burned up my front yard.

Someone with a can of ladies' hairspray rode across my yard, 100 feet wide and eight feet tall, in those size letters, "Nigger lover."

And then someone shot a bullet hole through the front of my house and the hole is still in the window.

And if I sell the house before I die, I'm taking that window with me.

(laughs) (upbeat soul music) ♪ I'm in trouble ♪ They went into dangerous territory.

To confront Bull Connor and the commission and demand that segregation and discrimination be eliminated from Birmingham.

And when we arrived down there, Bull Connor and I think Jabo Waggoner, they conducted some city business.

And after they had finished that city business, Bull Connor asked, "Did anybody in the audience have anything they wanted to say?"

So Clemon was our first speaker.

I stood up and confronted the commission.

Before he finished speaking, Bull Connor asked Clemon, "Where do you live?"

And Clemon said, "Westfield, Alabama."

Bull Connor disqualified me because he declared that I didn't live in the city of Birmingham.

Clemon stood his grounds and told Bull Connor about the pervasive discrimination, segregation that was in Birmingham and throughout the south.

Then Dr. Jonathan McPherson, who was a chemistry professor at Miles College at that time, told Bull Connor he had taken the police exam twice and the highest score he could make was something like, somewhere between 70 and 80.

So he knew something was wrong with the test examiners.

The way they evaluated the tests.

They weren't doing it fairly because they had policemen, some of 'em who could barely read and write.

So he knew that the tests were not being scored properly, whenever a Black person took it.

So Bull Connor lashed out at Dr. McPherson, like he had done to Clemon.

And I was the next speaker and I talked about some of the same discrimination and segregation and all this kind of stuff in Birmingham.

And Bull Connor asked me, "Boy, where are you from, where you live?"

I said, "125 4th Avenue D Southwest."

And he said that, "You are not even from Birmingham."

I said, "I'm from Birmingham.

I've been here all my life, except when I was away, traveling in the Army."

So Bull Connor told me, said, "Well if you are dissatisfied with the way I run Birmingham, you ought to leave."

I said, "This is my town, just like it is yours.

And I'm going to stay here until we get it correct, live or die."

♪ Trouble ♪ We left the petition and Bull Connor then commanded the police department to come and escort us out of City Hall.

And he told me to be out of town by sundown.

And I was.

(laughs) (upbeat jazz music) If not for Miles College in 1961 and '62, the development of the selective buying campaign, Birmingham would not have been ready for Martin Luther King.

The selected buying campaign, I think, is the single most important event, which led to the coming of Martin Luther King to Birmingham in the spring of 1963.

The Black folk had demonstrated that they were ready to protest.

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth visited the SCLC convention.

It was the selective buying campaign that he made note of.

He said to Dr. King and his colleagues and his allies, "Come to Birmingham because of what's already occurring with the Miles College students."

Then the foot soldiers were forgotten.

The movement came in from out of town.

(dramatic hip hop music) [Narrator] So the warriors stepped back and became historians.

Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference came into the city.

I went down to see what I could do, along with Deenie Drew, the two of us went together.

Someone said, "Someone needs to be writing this down, taking the minutes."

And I don't know who it was, but I think it was either John Drew, Deenie's husband, or Deenie who said, "Ruth Barefield-Pendelton will take the minutes."

And I didn't know how to say no.

So I started taking the minutes.

I would go every morning after I got my children and my husband off, children off to school and the husband off to the office.

I go to room 30 at the A.G. Gaston Motel and that's where the meetings were held.

Now I have been asked many times, "What was going on at the meetings?"

If there was not a march scheduled for that morning, we had the meeting at nine o'clock in the motel.

Room 30.

But if a march was scheduled, we had the meeting that afternoon in the L.R.

Hall Auditorium, in their conference room.

And the strategist, Wyatt Walker, would tell, would give his report.

That's how it began.

He would give his report.

How many people were in jail.

Those meetings in room 30 were so significant and germane to the history of the movement.

This book that I wrote were minutes, not my words, just the minutes of what was said every morning from April 6th till June.

[Narrator] Blazed trails.

U.W.

and my mother are charged with the first sit-in at the Birmingham Library.

My group desegregated the Birmingham Public Library and we were sure that we were gonna be arrested.

The Lord arranged it so that the adored in our group was a Black woman who looks like a white woman, Deenie Drew.

And so the policeman didn't arrest us.

[Narrator] And led marches, finding humor while facing danger.

♪ I ♪ ♪ Find a little more strength ♪ ♪ On this old journey ♪ ♪ When I ♪ Protest March of 19, Easter Sunday of 1963, which emanated from the Thirgood CME Church.

And that march was led by Dr. John Porter, 6th Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. N.H. Smith, pastor of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church, A.D. King, who was brother to Dr. King, and Frank Dukes.

♪ I know the Lord ♪ ♪ Be right there ♪ We started the march from Thirgood CME Church, and after we had gotten about a block and a half from the church, the police force surrounded us, led by the police chief, whose name was Jamie Moore.

And they stopped us.

And Jamie Moore asked N.H., Dr. Smith, where we were going.

And Dr. Smith told Chief Jamie Moore that we were just going for a walk.

So (laughs) they detained us and began arresting us and I was arrested three times for marching and demonstrations.

I spent about, I guess 12 days in jail.

(dramatic hip hop music) [Narrator] But when the demonstrations were over, the battles continued in a different arena and against the most vulnerable soldiers.

Thousands of children had been put out of school for their participation.

Placed in jail, handcuffed, locked in the truck.

The lawyers wanted someone to file a suit and use their child to do that, someone who had been arrested.

Three of my children had been arrested for demonstrating and I volunteered.

Some did not accept the challenge, but I accepted the challenge to do that.

And the case was filed in federal court with Judge Tuttle in Atlanta.

During that time, in the name of my daughter, Linda Cal Woods, and others, by her father, Reverend Calvin Woods versus the Birmingham Board of Education.

And as a result of that injunction being filed against the Birmingham Board of Education, all of the children were permitted to get back in school.

They suspended some and some they actually expelled from school.

So this lawsuit knocked all of that out and they were able to go back.

(upbeat jazz music) [Narrator] Miles continued to be an oasis of enlightenment and a resource for progress.

[Voiceover] Hosting a number of cultural events, like a concert with Joan Baez.

[Narrator] Raising money to help provide transportation to the March on Washington by sounding a call that was answered by laypeople and celebrities alike.

And on one glorious night in the summer of 1963, put on a concert that featured Johnny Mathis, Ray Charles, Joe Lewis, and many more.

Then, Miles helped usher in the new era of integration in Birmingham.

I was an undergraduate at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And my undergraduate dean was a man named John Monroe, who had met the then Miles College President, Dr. Lucius Pitts, at an education meeting some time in the very early 1960s, I think in about 1963.

And he said to John Monroe, "Why don't you get a group of undergraduates to accompany you, and we will have an equal number of undergraduates from Miles College, work with them together as a group."

The federal government had initiated the Head Start program, but none of the public school systems in the area was willing to accept federal money because it required desegregation of the program.

And as I recall, Miles College and the Unitarian Church were the two groups that stepped forward, and I think maybe Miles operated as many as 10.

Our group at Miles College, the undergraduate group of Miles students and the group from Cambridge, we agreed that we would work as a community, that if any of us did something, it would be an experience that could be shared by everyone in the community.

[Narrator] While others paid homage to the movement's heroes and heroines.

The people that were involved in the movement, and they needed to be remembered.

I put up 13 monuments.

[Narrator] And reflected.

I met so many wonderful people, having been involved in the movement.

(upbeat jazz music) We're headed in the right direction.

I live here, but it's considered Dynamite Hill.

We don't call it that anymore.

[Narrator] So for those who perhaps hold guilt over past sins, either real or imagined, committed by you or your ancestors, lay down your guilt.

For those who perhaps have wrapped yourselves in blankets woven from the bitterness of the past, or embraced a sense of entitlement that makes a mockery of the movement, fold the blankets neatly, take personal responsibility for all that you have or have not done, and know this.

In Birmingham, it's a brand new day.

The once forbidden coexistence between Blacks and whites is no more.

Instead, a diverse group of ethnicities interact in every facet of life.

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