David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

saying, “Down here we make our own law.” He sat drinking his bourbon every morning at the Molton Hotel, loudly predicting that King would “run out of niggers.” Now he looked out the window and saw Terrapin ahead of him at every turn. He was in shock. Those imaginary one thousand protesters were a provocation . “Bull Connor had something in his mind about not letting these niggers get to city hall,” Walker said. “I prayed that he’d keep trying to stop us.…Birmingham would have been lost if Bull had let us go down to the city hall and pray. If he had let us do that and stepped aside, what else would be new? There would be no movement, no publicity.” Please, Brer Connor, please. Whatever you do, don’t throw me in the briar patch. And of course that’s just what Connor did.
    A month into the protest, Walker and King stepped up the pressure. One of the Birmingham team, James Bevel, had been working with local schoolchildren, instructing them in the principles of nonviolent resistance. Bevel was a Pied Piper: a tall, bald, hypnotic speaker who wore a yarmulke and bib overalls and claimed to hear voices. (McWhorter calls him a “militant out of Dr. Seuss.”) On the last Monday in April, he dropped off leaflets at all of the black high schools around the county: “Come to 16th Street Baptist Church at noon on Thursday. Don’t ask permission.” The city’s most popular black disc jockey—Shelley “the Playboy” Stewart—sent out the same message to his young listeners: “Kids, there’s gonna be a party at the park.” 8 The FBI got wind of the plan and told Bull Connor, who announced that any child who skipped school would be expelled. It made no difference. The kids came in droves. Walker called the day the children arrived “D Day.”
    At one o’clock, the doors to the church opened, and King’s lieutenants began sending the children out. They held signs saying “Freedom” or “I’ll Die to Make This Land My Home.” They sang “We Shall Overcome” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” Outside the church, Connor’s police officers waited. The children dropped to their knees and prayed, then filed into the open doors of the paddy wagons. Then another dozen came out. Then another dozen, and another, and another—until Connor’s men had begun to get an inkling that the stakes had been raised again.
    A police officer spotted Fred Shuttlesworth. “Hey, Fred, how many more have you got?”
    “At least a thousand more,” he replied.
    “God A’mighty,” the officer said.
    By the end of the day, more than six hundred children were in jail.
    The next day—Friday—was “Double-D Day.” This time fifteen hundred schoolchildren skipped school to come down to 16th Street Baptist. At one o’clock, they began filing out of the church. The streets surrounding Kelly Ingram Park were barricaded by police and firefighters. There was no mystery about why the firefighters had been called in. They had high-pressure hoses on their fire trucks, and “water cannons,” as they were also known, had been a staple of crowd control since the 1930s in the early days of Nazi Germany. Walker knew that if the demonstrations grew so large that they overwhelmed the Birmingham police, Connor would be sorely tempted to turn on the hoses. He wanted Connor to turn on the hoses. “It was hot in Birmingham,” he explained. “I told [Bevel] to let the pep rally go on a while and let these firemen sit out there and bake in the sun until their tempers were like hair triggers.”
    And the dogs? Connor had been itching to use the city’s K-9 Corps. Earlier that spring, in a speech, Connor had vowed to combat the civil right protesters with one hundred German shepherd police dogs. “I want ’em to see the dogs work,” Connor growled, as things began to get out of control in Kelly Ingram Park—and nothing made Walker happier than that. He had children marching in the streets, and now Connor wanted to let German shepherds loose on them? Everyone in King’s camp knew what it would look like if someone published a photograph of a police dog lunging at a child.
    Connor stood watch as the children came closer. “Do not cross,” he said. “If you come any further, we will turn the fire hoses on you.” Connor’s jails were full. He couldn’t arrest anyone else, because he had nowhere to put them. The children kept coming. The firemen were hesitant. They were not used to controlling crowds.