Bull Connor Orders Fire Hoses and Police Dogs Against Children in Birmingham Campaign

On May 3, 1963, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered police and firefighters to unleash high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs on more than 1,000 young students, some as young as eight years old, who were marching downtown to protest segregation. The previous day, on May 2, the “Children’s Crusade”—organized by SCLC’s James Bevel as part of the Birmingham Campaign—had seen 1,200 children arrested. On the second day, Connor realized the jails could hold no more protesters, so he directed police to move from mass arrests to forcibly keeping demonstrators out of the downtown business area using violent methods that shocked the nation and the world.

The water from the fire hoses was powerful enough to strip bark off trees, tear clothing from bodies, and knock children off their feet, sending them rolling down the street. Police dogs attacked protesters, and officers used batons to beat young demonstrators. Images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers worldwide, triggering international outrage. Birmingham’s local newspapers—the Birmingham Post-Herald and Birmingham News—deliberately chose not to put these stories on the front page, attempting to minimize local awareness of the violence. However, the national press, including broadcast television networks, gave the story prominent coverage, forcing Americans to confront the brutal reality of institutional racism.

The stark images of state-sanctioned violence against children proved to be a turning point for the civil rights movement. The public outcry provoked President John F. Kennedy to propose comprehensive civil rights legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Over the following days, more than 3,000 demonstrators were arrested, and on May 10, an agreement was reached to begin desegregating Birmingham. On May 23, 1963, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered Connor to vacate his office. Four months later, on September 15, 1963, KKK members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair—in retaliation for the desegregation agreement. The Birmingham Campaign exposed how Southern officials weaponized police and fire departments as instruments of terror to maintain white supremacy, demonstrating the systematic corruption of public safety institutions that were supposed to protect citizens but instead attacked children exercising constitutional rights—a pattern of institutional violence that revealed the authoritarian foundations of segregation and the lengths to which officials would go to resist federal civil rights enforcement.