Birmingham's Children's Crusade Draws Dogs and Fire Hoses on Camera

What happened

SCLC launched the Birmingham campaign on April 3, 1963, with sit-ins, marches, and a boycott of downtown merchants in a city King's aides considered the most segregated in America. When arrests thinned the ranks of adult volunteers, organizer James Bevel proposed recruiting schoolchildren, reasoning that young people could take on the campaign without the job and family risks adults faced. On May 2, more than 1,000 Black students marched from the 16th Street Baptist Church toward downtown Birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. On May 3, when even more students turned out, Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor ordered police and firemen to stop them, and Birmingham's fire department turned high-pressure hoses on the marchers while officers set police dogs on fleeing demonstrators and bystanders.

How we know

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute and the National Museum of African American History and Culture both document the Children's Crusade from SCLC's own campaign records and contemporary photographs by Charles Moore.

Sources

• The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. Birmingham Campaign · Reputable sourcekinginstitute.stanford.edu · The domain "kinginstitute.stanford.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• National Museum of African American History and Culture. The Children's Crusade · Reputable sourcenmaahc.si.edu · The domain "nmaahc.si.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.