Shattered Glass in Birmingham: My Family's Fight for Civil Rights, 1961-1964 by Randall C Jimerson

Author:Randall C Jimerson [Jimerson, Randall C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States, Civil Rights, Political Science, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), History
ISBN: 9780807154397
Google: fFi2AgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 19348503
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2014-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

By early October, Dr. Pitts told Dad that Sid Smyer’s group, the Senior Citizens Committee, “are getting with it.” Downtown stores in Birmingham had painted over segregated restroom and water fountain signs. Business leaders seemed more willing to negotiate with blacks. However, tensions remained high.

Alabama Council President Nat Welch reported: “The Birmingham racial situation is acute at this time. Our executive director, Reverend Norman Jimerson, has been in Alabama a little over a year. He has concentrated his major effort in the ‘Johannesburg of North America.’ On his own initiative he has done a terrific job this past year in establishing rapport with the leading businessmen in Birmingham. Jimerson has been particularly effective with the Chamber of Commerce group.”

As Welch observed: “Reverend Jimerson is the only man in Birmingham who has the confidence of both Negro leaders, including Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Reverend Martin Luther King, and the white Senior Citizens Committee. When Martin Luther King’s group was in Birmingham last week for their meeting the situation was explosive. Jimerson was able to work out a plan where the downtown merchants agreed to remove signs from drinking fountains and restrooms, and the Senior Citizens Committee agreed to form a bi-racial committee to deal positively with the racial situation in general and job classifications specifically.”

Despite these temporary signs of racial progress, by late October, Dad wrote to Paul Rilling: “The situation in Birmingham is difficult to assess. It looks as if the Senior Citizens Committee is still meeting, but since Miles College students plan to resume a Selective Buyers Campaign, many of the Senior Citizens are taking the attitude that you can’t trust or work with Negroes. Their decision to take further steps is no longer unanimous.” He also stated that Chuck Morgan “has filed two historic cases in which he is charging that white man’s justice Alabama style precludes the possibility of a Negro getting justice. He is enumerating a long list of law enforcement and court procedures that point up the discriminations a Negro faces, from the cradle to the grave.” Morgan had told Dad, “The only thing that is not segregated is the electric chair, and that is because there is only one.”

Nat Welch and Paul Rilling weren’t the only people to recognize my father’s success in promoting peaceful changes in Birmingham’s racial tensions. Segregationists also took notice. On October 19, Dad wrote to Burke Marshall, his contact in the United States Department of Justice: “Wednesday noon Radio Station WAPI reported that Bull Connor admitted that he had an informer at the meeting held the night before by the Birmingham Council on Human Relations. He misquoted me and others. His purpose was to link the Council with those who are interested in changing the form of city government, which is to be voted on at the November 6th election. I had a premonition that this might be the occasion that he would use information about me and the Council that he has been so carefully preparing during the past year.

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