3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

mayhem, televised before a national audience, prompted not only desegregation in
Birmingham but also a wave of national sympathy, and a rash of similar protests across the
South . The civil rights movement climaxed on August 28, 1%3, when a quarter million
people participated in the Mac+ch on Washington, where King delivered his famous "I Have a
Dream" speech .
The victory of Birmingham was short-lived. Less than three weeks later, on
September 15, 1%3, someone bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham .
The explosion killed four black girls . Many saw the bombing as an end to the nonviolent
phase of the movement. As King prepared to deliver the eulogy at a joint funeral service for
the little girls, novelist John Killens alluded that this tragedy marked the end of nonviolence
in the movement . "Negroes must be prepared to protect themselves with guns," he said .u
Malcolm X agreed . He first went on record as a naysayer of nonviolent direct action
in the spring of 1%3, when he accused Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of "disarming" southern
blacks in their struggle for rights . Two television interviews-one with Dr. Kenneth Clark,
one with James Baldwin~onfirmed his thoughts on nonviolence in the civil rights
movement. "King is the best weapon that the white man, who wants to brutalize Negroes,
has ever gotten in this country," he told Clark, "because he is setting up a situation where,
when the white man wants to attack Negroes, they can't defend themselves:' Malcolm
denounced King in the wake of the Birmingham protests, when many protestors were injured.
uKillens, quoted in Corctta Scott King, 1]1y Life With Martin Luther KinJr. (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1%9), 226 .
Malcolm X, interview by Kenneth B. Clark, June, 1%3, reprinted in John Henrik
Clarke, Malcolm X: The Man and Ids Times (New York: Collier Books, 1969), 168-181 ; see
also "Malcolm X Disputes Nonviolence Policy;' New York Times (June S,1%3) : 29.
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