MINUTES CENTRAL COMMITTEE 1963 Q BIRMINGHAM HISTORICAL SOCIETY MINUTES CENTRAL COMMITTEE 1963 ^tt^Sa^p^^Ljlt^ BIRMINGHAM HISTORICAL SOCIETY t^it/i the financial support of the Alabama Power Foundation Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication data on file. Copyright ©2013 Birmingham Historical Society One Sloss Quarters Birmingham, Alabama 35222 205-251-1880 www.bhistorical.org ISBN: 0-943994-38-1 Printed in Canada Table of Contents About the Secretary v Introduction 1 Secretary's Telephone Call List of ACMHR Members, SCLC Staff, Students, and Lawyers 8 Others Attending the Central Committee Meetings, Added by the Editors 9 Minutes of the ACMHR and SCLC Central Committee, Twenty-Two Meetings, April 9, 1963-June 14,1963 13 Attachments to the Minutes, As Added by the Secretary News Release by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, President, ACMHR, April 8,1963 11 Points for Progress, Birmingham, Alabama 29 Petition for Parade Permit, April 26, 1963 30 Statement of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, May 10, 1963 45 Statement of Reverend Martin Futher King, Jr., May 10, 1963 46 Attachments, As Added by the Editors Fimeline of Civic and Civil Rights Events, August 1962-July 1963, Birmingham, Alabama 66 Persons Associated with the Central Committee Fhe Secretary's Fist of Members 71 Other Persons Attending Central Committee Meetings 76 Other Key Players 77 City of Birmingham Segregation Ordinances 79 Minutes of the City Council of Birmingham, Establishing the Committee on Community Affairs, May 28, 1963 83 Minutes of the City Council, Abolishing Segregation Ordinances, July 23,1963 85 Index 86 Mrs. John (Deenie) Drew, Miles College President Dr. Lucius Pitts, Mrs. Tyree (Ruth) Barefield-Pendleton at Miles College, c. 1963. Photograph courtesy Mrs. Barefield- Pendleton. About the Secretary Ruth Kimball grew up in Pascagoula, Mississippi. After graduating from Tougaloo College, she married Pascagoula's first black doctor, Dr. Tyree J. Barefield-Pendleton. In 1953, the young couple moved to Birmingham's Roosevelt City, where her husband opened a general practice. She taught history and worked on voter registration campaigns. By 1958, the couple had built a home on Dynamite Hill. Their two children, Denise and Tyree, were still young when she and her new friends and neighbors Deenie Drew, Althea Montgomery, Ruth Gaillard, andWilla Adams joined in civil rights causes. In 1960, Miles College students conducted sit-ins at Foveman's, Pizitz, Kress, and Britt's—downtown stores with lunch counters. In the spring of 1962, the students, with the blessing of college president Dr. Fucius Pitts, launched a Selective Buying Campaign, encouraging blacks not to shop at segregated stores so as to pressure the merchants to desegregate their facilities. Dr. Pitts asked Ruth Barefield-Pendleton, Deenie Drew, and Althea Montgomery to work with the students. Faculty and Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) member Jonathan McPherson served as their adviser; the women considered themselves the "Den Mothers." Few students had cars at this time, so on Saturdays and Sundays they chauffeured the students as they blanketed the community with flyers about the boycott. The women also dropped off students downtown to sit in at downtown stores. When the students were arrested, instigating court cases, the women bailed them out and went with them to court. Frank Dukes and U.W. Clemon were among the student activists. According to Mrs. Barefield-Pendleton, after Reverend Shuttlesworth and his ACMHR became involved, the boycott really took off. In the spring of 1963, because she had worked with the students and the ACMHR, Mrs. Barefield-Pendleton was tapped to serve on the Central Committee—the group overseeing strategy for the Birmingham Campaign and negotiations with the white community. Elected Secretary, she took the minutes. After getting her children off to school and her husband to his office, "we were off to the meetings in the Gaston Motel and the F. R. Hall Conference Room," she recalls. In addition to work on this committee, she attended the evening mass meetings and picked up entertainers and officials, driving them to places and events about the city. Negotiating the police and fire blockades, she also dropped off student demonstrators in the retail district. The Minutes of the Central Committee remained as notes in Mrs. Barefield- Pendleton's home until the early 1990s, when she saw historian Taylor Branch on television regretting the lack of first-hand accounts of the Birmingham Movement. She then pieced together her notes and filled a handwritten ledger book that she gave to the Birmingham Civil Rghts Institute when it opened in 1992. She kept a copy that she made available for publication in this volume. J-f C5S*d£vdyilU3 <2£i^-<-»-"^"^ <g: SO ddd iu^<^-cUd^dL_ ZZdlt^ (d&-d^mj-_d—l ?fci^. dc&Ld^JzqJlU- (d^_.-t_^2ridj__J__d ________ __±!^4A_Z_____J_=L AddJd- „-_jdC<~d- *~dL - d&-_±>.^ -tp- (pit*. , °fa_-r,~,_ J_.J *t^_JL J$i . jLijL_____^. Z^_yr6^^^^ddZ_>>--^_^dudL rGd_a$^A__^___ ^^tffi-/ ________¥&& _ dddt_e~ {j£J—J& _^d___±. '£_^drvcd-%^A_J^, xs=- _______ __*izi_..-^m*- id Excerpt from the Minutes of the Central Committee, recorded by Ruth Barefield- Pendleton, Secretary, April 14, 1963. Courtesy Ruth Barefield-Pendleton. Introduction The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Birmingham in the spring of 1963 to help their local affiliate stage demonstrations intended to eliminate racial segregation in the City of Birmingham. Formed in 1957, SCLC was an umbrella organization that included representation from local civil rights groups across the South. SCLC was well funded and brilliantly staffed. SCLC was invited to Birmingham by the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, SCLC secretary and the only SCLC officer who directed a local movement. From his base at Bethel Baptist Church in the Collegeville neighborhood and later from his church in Cincinnati, Ohio, Shuttlesworth had served as president and prime mover of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) for seven years.Through national speaking engagements, a regular column in the Pittsburgh Courier, and his Birmingham work, Shuttlesworth was known across the country as "the South's fearless freedom fighter." Historians acknowledge Shuttlesworth's ACMHR as the strongest local civil rights movement. Shuttlesworth organized the ACMHR on June 5, 1956, days after Alabama officials outlawed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the state. NAACP had begun to accumulate significant U.S. Supreme Court victories destined to change "the Southern way of life." State officials thought that eliminating the NAACP would slow change. However, Shuttlesworth's new Movement kept the pressure on. ACMHR sought not only to win court cases but also to achieve first-class citizenship for its people through direct-action challenges. For seven years, Shuttlesworth and ACMHR challenged nearly every local segregation law and won victories in the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably in public transportation. With the help of Miles College students and area residents, ACMHR also instigated economic boycotts and sit-ins at retail stores. The widespread Easter 1962 boycott of Birmingham stores drew significant attention to the Movement and caused financial hardship for Birmingham merchants. In May 1961, Shuttlesworth coordinated the Freedom Rides across the state of Alabama, advising, counseling, and nursing those seeking to bring attention to racial practice. The brutal beating of the riders in Birmingham proved to be the event that catapulted Birmingham leaders—including Sidney Smyer, owner of the real estate firm that founded Birmingham and the incoming president of the Chamber of Commerce, and the brilliant and progressive attorney David Vann—to undertake a campaign to change Birmingham's form of government and oust Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor from office. In 1962, Smyer chaired a Senior Citizens Committee of corporate leaders that Movement folks called "the white power structure."When Birmingham citizens voted to create a new mayor-council form of government in November 1962, Bull Connor decided to run for Mayor, losing the election to the more moderate Albert Boutwell in April 1963 and then refusing to vacate his office, thus providing Birmingham with two aspiring city governments for 38 days, during which the ACMHR-SCLC demonstrations took place. In 1963, ACMHR had a fearless leader, a stalwart core of 300 to 400 dedicated members, and a demonstrated ability to organize the community. Weekly mass meetings held at churches across the greater Birmingham area not only educated but inspired participants to take direct action against inequity and injustice despite the ever-present fear of retaliation by employers, the police, and the Ku Klux Klan. Not everyone in Birmingham's black community belonged to the ACMHR, nor did everyone support the protests that began on April 3, 1963, after months of planning. Some black leaders had been working with those who changed the city's form of government and wanted to give the new government a chance to work things out. Others did not want to rock the boat. On April 9, Reverend King argued his case to those hostile to the demonstrations, saying: "This is the most segregated city in America and we have to stick together if we ever hope to change its ways. I and my associates in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have come to help you to break down the walls." King promised visits from baseball great Jackie Robinson and entertainers Sammy Davis, Jr. and Harry Belafonte.The blind entertainer Al Hibbler had marched that day and sang hit songs that evening at a mass meeting. That same day April 9, a group was formed to present a unified front and to coordinate the joint ACMHR-SCLC campaign strategy. The group met for the first time in Room 30 at the Gaston Motel, the suite of rooms the campaign had leased from local businessman A.G.