Answer:
In the mid 1950’s, segregation was widespread and legally enforced throughout the American south. Birmingham, Alabama was a hotspot of black activism in opposition to segregationist policies. Between December 26, 1956 and November 1958, Birmingham blacks, led by Fred Shuttlesworth and other black ministers, initiated a campaign against the legal segregation of Birmingham buses. On December 20, 1956, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth delivered a statement on TV stating that unless Birmingham buses were desegregated in the next six days, blacks, specifically members of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), would desegregate the buses themselves. Five days later, Shuttlesworth’s house was bombed by white supremacists, but he and his family walked away with only minor injuries. The next day, Shuttlesworth urged members of the ACMHR, of which he was president, to follow him in a protest of bus segregation. Shuttlesworth and his supporters boarded city buses, but they refused to sit in the back of the bus, as African-Americans were obligated to do. The protesters were polite and civil throughout, and after many hours of non-intervention, police arrested twenty-one protesters.
Explanation:
