1963: How The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement Changed America and the World
Barnett Wright
In 1963, Alabama’s largest newspaper was The Birmingham News, and its reporters and photographers had a ringside seat to the powerfully impactful events unfolding before, during and since the Birmingham Campaign for civil rights. During that year, when the eyes of the nation and beyond were on Birmingham, a huge archive of documentation was collected, and remained in the morgue of the News for decades. In 2012, a year away from the 50th anniversary of the ‘63 struggles, writer Barnett Wright – then a reporter for the News – chronicled the day-to-day stories that captured what had been happening in the city surrounding the protests, demonstrations, arrests, and bombings that would eventually draw national media, federal intervention, international condemnation against the ongoing oppression of black citizens, and eventually, change in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wright’s book offers an unprecedented look into the deep archives of the News, and another important insight into Birmingham’s reality in a year that helped shape the era.
