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

Connor turned to the fire chief: “Turn ’em on, or go home.” The firemen turned on their “monitor guns,” valves that turned the spray of their hoses into a high-pressure torrent. The children clung to one another and were sent sprawling backwards. The force of the water ripped some of the marchers’ shirts from their bodies and flung others against walls and doorways.
    Back at the church, Walker began deploying waves of children to the other end of the park to open another front. Connor had no more fire trucks. But he was determined that none of the marchers cross over into “white” Birmingham. “Bring the dogs,” Connor ordered, calling in eight K-9 units. “Why did you bring old Tiger out?” Connor shouted at one of his police officers. “Why didn’t you bring a meaner dog—this one is not the vicious one!” The children came closer. A German shepherd lunged at a boy. He leaned in, arms limp, as if to say, “Take me, here I am.” On Saturday, the picture ran on the front page of every newspaper around the country.

6.
    Does Wyatt Walker’s behavior make you uncomfortable? James Forman, who was a key figure in the civil rights movement in those years, was with Walker when Connor first deployed the K-9 units. Forman says that Walker started jumping with joy. “We’ve got a movement. We’ve got a movement. We had some police brutality.” Forman was stunned. Walker was as aware as any of them just how dangerous Birmingham could be. He had been in the room when King gave everyone a mock eulogy. How could he be jumping up and down at the sight of protesters being attacked by police dogs? 9
    After D Day, King and Walker heard it from all sides. The judge processing the arrested marchers said that the people who “misled those kids” into marching “ought to be put under the jail.” On the floor of Congress, one of Alabama’s congressmen called the use of children “shameful.” The mayor of Birmingham denounced the “irresponsible and unthinking agitators” who were using children as “tools.” Malcolm X—the black activist who was in every way more radical than King—said “real men don’t put their children on the firing line.” The New York Times editorialized that King was engaged in “perilous ventures in brinkmanship” and Time scolded him for using children as “shock troops.” The U.S. attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, warned that “schoolchildren participating in street demonstrations is a dangerous business,” and said, “An injured, maimed or dead child is a price that none of us can afford to pay.” 10
    On the Friday night, after the second day of children’s protests, King spoke at 16th Street Baptist Church to the parents of those who had been arrested that day and the day before. They knew full well the dangers and humiliations of being a black person in Birmingham. Jesus said He’d go as far as Memphis. Can you imagine how they felt with their children at that moment languishing in Bull Connor’s jails? King stood up and tried to make light of the situation: “Not only did they stand up in the water, they went under the water!” he said. “And dogs? Well, I’ll tell you. When I was growing up, I was dog bitten…for nothing. So I don’t mind being bitten by a dog for standing up for freedom!”
    Whether or not any of the parents were buying this is unclear. King plunged on: “Your daughters and sons are in jail.…Don’t worry about them.…They are suffering for what they believe, and they are suffering to make this nation a better nation.” Don’t worry about them? Taylor Branch writes that there were rumors—“true and false”—about “rats, beatings, concrete beds, overflowing latrines, jailhouse assaults, and crude examinations for venereal disease.” Seventy-five and eighty children were packed into cells intended for eight. Some had been bused out to the state fairground and held without food and water in stockades in the pouring rain. King’s response? “Jail helps you to rise above the miasma of everyday life,” he said blithely. “If they want some books, we will get them. I catch up on my reading every time I go to jail.”
    Walker and King were trying to set up that picture—the German shepherd lunging at the boy. But to get it, they had to play a complex and duplicitous game. To Bull Connor, they pretended that they had a hundred times more supporters than they did. To the press, they pretended that they were shocked