One Photo That Changed America #004

The Day a Police Dog Lunged at a Boy

May 3, 1963. Birmingham, Alabama.

Ten in the morning. Hundreds of teenagers streamed out of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and began to march. Most were fifteen or sixteen years old. They carried no weapons. They sang as they walked.

Eugene 'Bull' Connor, Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, gave the order.

Release the dogs. Turn on the hoses.

German shepherds lunged into the crowd. Fire hoses blasted water at a hundred gallons per second — enough pressure to strip bark from a tree. Children fell. Some were bitten. Some were slammed against walls.

The cameras of the journalists standing nearby did not stop clicking.

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King's Plan — Project C

In early 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had chosen Birmingham deliberately.

It was one of the most racially segregated cities in America. Black residents could not sit at white lunch counters, attend the same schools, or use the same parks. And Bull Connor was a man who did not hide what he was.

King understood: if Connor responded with violence, the world would see it.

The operation was called Project C — for Confrontation. When adult volunteers dwindled, King made the decision to ask the children. On May 2nd, roughly a thousand Black teenagers poured out of churches across Birmingham. Police arrested six hundred.

The next day, more children came.

That was when Connor gave his order.

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When the Photos Reached the World

On the morning of May 4th, the New York Times ran the photograph on its front page.

A police dog with its teeth at a boy's stomach. A woman thrown across the pavement by a fire hose. Children collapsed on the sidewalk.

The Washington Post, LIFE magazine, newspapers across the country and around the world published the images.

A White House aide brought the photographs to President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy looked at them and said, according to those present:

"This makes me sick."

Kennedy had been cautious about civil rights legislation — wary of losing Southern Democratic votes. Birmingham's photographs changed that calculation.

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What the Photos Built

On June 11, 1963, Kennedy addressed the nation on television — the first time he had openly committed to civil rights legislation.

"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution."

On June 19th, Kennedy submitted a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress.

After Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the bill through.

On July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

• Discrimination by race, color, religion, or national origin: banned outright
• Segregation in public facilities: declared unconstitutional
• Employment discrimination: prohibited
• Federal enforcement of civil rights: strengthened

Fourteen months after a police dog lunged at a boy on a Birmingham sidewalk.

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The Paradox of Bull Connor

The man who ordered the attack, Bull Connor, had inadvertently made the Civil Rights Act possible.

King later reflected:

"We used Bull Connor's violence as our most powerful weapon. We made his brutality work for us."

Because the violence happened in front of cameras, the world could see it. And because the world saw it, things changed.

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Where the Photos Live Now

The Birmingham campaign was photographed by many journalists. Among them, Charles Moore of LIFE magazine took the images that spread most widely. Moore's archive is held at the Birmingham Public Library, Archives Division.

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Next — #005: Saigon, February 1, 1968. A single execution photograph shattered American trust in the Vietnam War.