"In the spring of 1963, I hitched a ride to Birmingham, Alabama, and checked into the hotel where Martin Luther King was staying. A lot of attention was being focused on the town, and I knew something terribly important was happening. Most of the organizers of the civil rights demonstrations were still very accessible then. I actually had breakfast with King a couple of times. The organizers proposed getting high school students involved, since they were running out of demonstrators. Their parents were consulted and the consensus was that the children had the least to lose in terms of reprisals, and the most to gain in terms of future opportunities. So thousands of young people filed into Kelly Ingram Park - and were promptly arrested. They went to jail gaily, which was weird; but they filled the cells, so the police were paralyzed as more people flooded into the downtown area. At some point, the police lost their temper and brought out the dogs and fire hoses."
Bob Adelman’s Mine Eyes Have Seen: Bearing Witness to the Struggle for Civil Rights is published by
Thames and Hudson. Photographs on exhibit at Westwood Gallery, New York City.
