Thread by @michaelharriot

The 16th Street Bombing was 58 years ago.

But just like MOST things, most of us really know the real story:

A thread

https://twitter.com/AfricanaCarr/status/1438183731576070150

The first thing a lot of people think is that this surprise attack "shook the city" and the world.

Not really.

While it was a despicable act, for people in Birmingham, it wasn't that much of a surprise. White supremacist terrorists did this ALL the time in Birmingham.

There's even a part of the city called Dynamite Hill because, during the Civil Rights Era,* more than 50 homes in the city were bombed by white supremacists.

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church isn't in Dynamite Hill.

*Also, when I talk about the Civil Rights Era...

I'm not talking about the white timeline. It's not like Black people enjoyed inequality until 1955. In 1946, veterans and the Southern Negro Youth Congress marched for the right to vote. Arthur Shores began challenging Zoning laws in Bham '47

That's when the bombings started.

A dude named Samuel Matthews won the right to buy a house in a white neighborhood, they bombed him.

By August 17, 1949, people were fed up. 2000 people met to discuss the issue, but cops did NOTHING.

The year before the 16th St bombing, Bethel Baptist was bombed THREE TIMES.

Secondly, there's a reason people don't want true Black history taught in school. It's because they want to control the idea that the Civil Rights Movement was successful ONLY because of nonviolence & MLK

They push the "nonviolence" part & whitewash the "resistance" part.

The Civil Rights movement was NOT A NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT.

First of all, the white people committed PLENTY of violence. ALL of them. The ones who spat on kids integrating schools and the ones who put the politicians in power and the ones who upheld segregation.

MLK didn't talk about nonviolent resistance as much as he talked about DIRECT ACTION.

What's the difference?

Well, it's cool to march for change, and hold up signs. But that wasn't what MUCH of the CRM was about. They were about DOING SHIT.

When the KKK firebombed the Freedom Riders, those activists weren't trying to bring awareness to segregation. The Supreme Court had ALREADY outlawed segregation on interstate travel. The Freedom Riders wanted to challenge places that weren't abiding by the law (direct action)

The Montgomery Bus boycott wasn't a demonstration. It was an economic penalty. And I know people will say "Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat, then Rosa Parks did it."

But that's not quite how it happened.

Claudette Colvin did it. Then Aurelia Browder did it.

Browder was a 30-something widower with 6 children when she was radicalized by her Alabama State University English professor, Jo Ann Robinson, so she wouldn't give up her bus seat (direct action)

Susie McDonald was in her 70s and owned a pavilion where Black people could gather

Miss Sue could pass for white, so she made sure she TOLD the bus driver she was Black before she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat (direct action). The same day, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested (direct action). Then Jeanetta Reese (direct action)

THEN ROSA PARKS!

Professor Robinson who ran to her office, typed up a flyer and organized the initial boycott. MLK didn't even want to ask the city to integrate the buses. He only wanted to ask for a "defined" black seating area before others threatened to expose him as a coward

Although Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott made people take notice, it didn't desegregate buses in the city. It was a COURT CASE against Montgomery Mayor W.A Gayle and the city that desegregated Montgomery buses.

Whose actions?

And none of this is shade against MLK or Parks, I'm just trying to explain how we get to the next part.

See, when the people of Bham decided to mount a campaign against segregation in the city, many of the residents didn't think they needed MLK; they had Fred Shuttlesworth

Shuttlesowrth didn't take no shit. Even when his home was bombed. Even when he was beaten by the KKK. When Bham City Commissioner gave the KKK a 15 minutes head start to beat and bomb the Freedom Riders, Rev. Shuttlesworth was the one who sent armed deacons to defend them.

So when students organized a boycott against segregated businesses downtown, many thought MLK shouldn't be involved because the folks in Bham were a little... let's say "Bout that life."

They had folks stationed downtown confronting Black people patronizing segregated businesses

Basically they were like: "You BET NOT..."

But, because King wasn't there, there was not a lot of publicity. And because the protesters assumed all phones were tapped, white folks had NO CLUE what was going on

Until the city realized business was down by 40%

Then King came.

They called it Project C and it started on April 3. The C was for "confrontation" (You know how Shuttlesworth is). And they started putting pressure on ALL the white folks. They would "buss up" in white churches and make white folks put them out. They went to the white library

They just antagonized the city with Blackness because they knew Bull Connor, Bham's public safety commissioner, was racist AF (well, the whole city was). SO they passed a law against parading, protesting or boycotting.

But Shuttlesworth DGAF and he, King & others were arrested

That's when King wrote a Letter from a Birmingham jail. But, contrary to popular belief, King could have gotten out at any time. The organizers had the bail money, but they had something up their sleeve.

By then, King had been arrested 13 times.

People stopped caring. When Connor abused protesters, federal officers wouldn't even intervene

But James Bevel knew there was something worse than seeing King in jail. There was something worse than Black men and women bombed and beaten, so he began organizing "D-Day."

On May 2, 1963, thousands of children, teenagers and students skipped school and began marching to the mayor's office to confront the mayor once and for all about segregation and Bull Connor's use of violence.

It was a DIRECT ACTION.

It was resistance.

It was NOT nonviolent

Bull Connor released dogs & firehoses on the kids and locked so many people up, the jails were full. By May 6, the city had to build a literal concentration camp on the fairgrounds. Shuttlesworth was hospitalized after being sprayed with a fire hose

The city wanted a truce.

MLK was sent to negotiate.

Shuttlesworth told King: "When I see that you have called it off, I will get up out...my sickbed... and lead them back into the street. And your name’ll be Mud" (You know how Fred is)

On May 10 they agreed to partially desegregate Birmingham.

On Saturday, May 11, the room where King was staying was bombed.

At the same time, the home of AD King was bombed.

In BOTH CASES, witnesses said they saw uniformed police officers drop off packages at the locations of the bombs

Shit hit the fan.

The feds sent troops. Angry white people convinced the Birmingham Board of Education to expel 1081 Black students for protesting during the Children's Crusade but a judge reversed it in 3 days.

Chains ordered their Bham locations to desgregate

A Black student enrolled at the University of Alabama on June 11 while Gov. George Wallace stood in the door.

On July 12, a judge ordered BHam schools to desegregate

On July 23, the city council repealed ALL segregation laws.

On August 23, there was the March on Washington

On Sept. 3, the first day of school, Alabama State Troopers went to schools UNINVITED to try to block Black students from entering

On Sept 4, Dwight and FLoyd Armstrong became the first Black students in the city to attend a white school

On Sept 7. the Gov. closed ALL schools

So the National Guard integrated the schools under order from the president.

On Sept 8th, the home of Black businessman AG Gaston, who was partly financing the Civil Rights Movement, was bombed.

On Sept 12, Gastons other home was bombed

After the schools were integrated, white people across the city literally hunted Black people, UNTIL...

On September 15, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol McNair were in the church basement bathroom changing into their choir robes when the phone rang.

A voice said: "three minutes" and hung up.

They did NOT have three minutes.

Sarah Collins, was there, too. She had 21 pieces of glass in her eye. She was 12

Johnny Robinson knew it was hunting season. He was shot by police in the back as he bicycled away from the scene

Larry Joe Simms and Michael Lee Farley, both 16, were riding a motor scooter to a white supremacist rally when the bombing happened. They bought a Confederate flag, attached it to the scooter, and began shooting at the first Black people they saw.

The First Black person they saw was Virgil Lamar Ware, who was riding on the handlebars while his brother James pedaled.

They shot VIrgil in the face

He was 13.

An all-white jury found them guilty and sentenced them to seven months in jail

The judge suspended their sentence

Now here is the part that you don't know:

It wasn't just the residents of Birmingham who weren't surprised by the bombing. The FBI knew it was going to happen.

In April 1960 Special Agent Barrett Kemp recruited an informant named Gary Thomas Rowe.

Rowe joined the Eastview Klavern of the KKK. In 1961, he helped plan that attack on the Freedom Riders with Bull Connor. The FBI knew he was involved in the bombing at MLK's room. He would later be involved in the killing of Violla Luizzo.

Years later, the Birmingham police files revealed that multiple witnesses told cops that Bobby Frank Cherry, one of the men who was convicted 40 years later, was also responsible for beating Fred Shuttlesworth in 1957

And on Sept. 30, 1963, two weeks after the bombing

Col. Al Lingo arrested Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss after he said he found evidence that Bob was involved in the bombings. This is not a conspiracy theory. But what had happened was.... You know what?

Maybe you'll believe it if you read it from the NY Times:

NINE TEEN SIXTY FIVE.

And bombings didn't stop.

On April 1, 1965, 13-year-old Weymouth Crater was killed when a bomb exploded at his parents house.

It left a six-foot crater.

I live in Birmingham. A lot of the people who witnessed this evil are still alive. MOST of their children and their grandchildren are still alive, so these stories still live with them every day. But here's the thing:

Where do you think those white people went?

They raised kids and grandkids, too. Their kids are carrying that legacy around too. Birmingham is MORE segregated. America is just as conservative.

But people will tell you that times have changed and that was a long time ago.

Well, I know an expert.

That's Sarah Collins Rudolph

Of course, this video is from a long time ago.

September 15, 2021