"Negroes and whites will not segregate together as long as I am Commissioner."
If the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960's had a defining conflict, it was epitomized by the clash of two strong personalities, each convinced that he was in the right of things and the other man represented the forces of darkness.
These two men, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Eugene "Bull" Connor, met in person in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, in protest marches that resulted in some of the most indelible images of the 1960s. Who can forget the fire hoses and police dogs, the bark being stripped from trees from the water pressure of the hoses? With his actions taken against the Freedom Riders and integrationists, Bull Connor became a international symbol for hard-line segregation and a synonym for prejudice and hated.
Despite a thirty-year career in Alabama public office in which he did a great deal of good for the state and the city of Birmingham, Bull Connor is forever etched in our minds as the caricature of a Southern redneck, fire hose in one hand and police dog leash in the other.
Born Theophilus Eugene Connor in Selma, Alabama in 1897, son of a railroad dispatcher, Connor had a nomadic childhood as his family followed his father's job transfers from state to state. A high school dropout, Connor learned the art of railroad telegraphy from his father and became a often-transferred railroad employee himself upon his marriage to Beara Levens in 1920.
A chance encounter at a "baseball matinee," a way for fans to follow games without being able to attend the game by attending a storefront broadcast studio and hearing an announcer re-create the game from telegraphed reports, brought Connor a new career. Subbing for the regular announcer for the baseball game led Connor to employment in Birmingham, Alabama in his own baseball matinee, as well as work for the BIRMINGHAM NEWS and local radio stations. Asked to fill in for the regular radio announcer for a Birmingham Barons game, Connor became the radio voice of the Barons, winning popularity for his foghorn voice and his line of chatter, or "shooting the bull," which won him his life-long nickname.
Running for election to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1934 as a Jefferson County representative, Connor won his seat in the legislature without support from political machines. Connor's three-year term was highlighted by winning a fight for a civil service bill to replace the so-called "spoils" system of job appointments. After a good showing as Representative, Connor decided to stand for associate commissioner on the Birmingham City Council in 1937 and ran under the theme of "the people's candidate." Winning a position on the three-man commission handily, Connor was chosen to be Public Safety Commissioner, and made many changes in City Hall traditions to heal factionalism and fight crime.
Although considered a political progressive, Connor's opposition to integration showed early in his political career, and he took a hard line in enforcing the many segregation laws in force in Birmingham. He grabbed national headlines in 1938 by appearing at the meetings of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and attempting to enforce segregated seating, a move which angered participants and caused First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in attendance, to sit in the aisle between the black and white sections and refuse to move.
Connor continued to win re-election to the Birmingham City Commission throughout the 1940's and went on to suffer a nasty scandal in 1951 in which he was convicted of extramarital intercourse upon being discovered in a hotel room with his secretary, a conviction which Connor contended was a frame-up and which was overturned by the Alabama Supreme Court. A Citizen's Committee made an unfavorable report on Connor's Police Department management, and this coupled with impeachment proceedings, declared a mistrial twice, caused Connor to decide not to run for re-election in 1953.
Retiring to run a family gas station for three years, Connor again stood for election to the Birmingham City Commission in 1956, as Commissioner of Public Improvement, but lost in the run-off, probably due to his lack of knowledge of streets and sanitation and the voter's inability to see him as other than Police Commissioner. Running again for Public Safety Commission in 1957, Connor won by an extremely narrow margin of 103 votes.
Connor continued his hard-line anti-integration stand in his new term in office, believing that civil rights activists were nothing more than "outside agitators" and meant only harm to the city. For the remainder of the decade of the 50's, the turmoil that brought Birmingham the nickname of "Bombingham" for the many "unsolved" bomb attacks against civil rights activists and other blacks, would be fueled by Connor's failure to support any real prosecution of suspects. He continued to grab headlines in conflicts with civil rights activists over lunch-counter sit-ins, bus desegregation and school integration. He attributed his landslide re-election in 1961 to his stance, feeling that his enforcement of segregation statutes had kept Birmingham free of major race riots and violence. Two weeks later, that would begin to change.
Mother's Day, 1961 was the scene of mob violence in Anniston, Alabama as well as Birmingham as rioters attacked buses bearing the Freedom Riders, a group of activists engaged in protests against segregation of Southern bus systems. A group of nearly 60 white men attacked Freedom Riders at Birmingham's Trailways station, leaving nine passengers with injuries which required hospital treatment. Lack of police presence, which Connor blamed on the many officers off for the holiday, caused even the Birmingham News to question Connor's handling of the incident.
A question of whether Connor knew of the planned attack and deliberately withheld police support for the Freedom Riders has never been fully resolved in court. Another incident occurred a few days later in which Freedom Riders were removed from the bus and escorted out of town by Connor and police officers.
Connor was named in a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy for violation of the civil liberties of the Freedom Riders in the wake of the incidents, but was discharged from consideration after two days of testimony. In further fallout from the incidents, Connor's white voter support began to erode in the shock resulting from the attacks. Fearful that economic development of Birmingham was being irreparably harmed by the media coverage of the racial turmoil, some white civic leaders began a drive to change Birmingham's form of city government from three-man commission to mayor and council, in hopes of breaking what they saw as Connor's stranglehold of control of the city. Bull Connor's era of segregation at any cost was about to come to an end, but worse incidents and international publicity were still to come.
In a special election called on November 6, 1962 Birmingham voters rejected the politics of the past by a two-thousand vote margin. Connor ran for Mayor of Birmingham in 1963, losing to Albert Boutwell by 8000 votes. Connor remained in office, however, due to laws dealing with changes of government and incumbent terms. When Boutwell took office in April, 1963, the Commission refused to give up their office pending legal resolution of the court case over the change of civic government.
At this time, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was in the Birmingham City Jail following his arrest at a civil rights demonstration in Birmingham. Following criticism of his actions by liberal white ministers, who felt the demonstrations should have been postponed to allow the new government a change to make changes, King wrote a response that became famous as his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail." Connor's handling of King's arrest and further incidents in May, including the notorious use of fire hoses and police dogs against demonstrators, and other incidents of violence and rioting garnered national television coverage and indelibly marked Connor as the epitome of Southern racism.
But, even as television reporters converged on Birmingham, Connor's long tenure as Commission was coming to a close. A court decision in late May of 1963 ruled that Birmingham's change of city government was legal and Connor was ordered to vacate his office.
Bull Connor ran for and was elected Alabama's Public Service Commission President in 1964. Although suffering a crippling stroke in 1966 which left him wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life, Connor ran for reelection to the PSC in 1968, winning handily, but lost by a large margin in 1972, in part due to the growing number of black Alabama registered voters. Retiring home to Birmingham, Bull Connor, arch segregationist, suffered a second stroke in February 1973, lingering in intensive care for twelve days before passing away on March 10, 1973 at the age of seventy-five.
John Kennedy once said that Bull Connor did as much for the cause of civil rights as Abraham Lincoln. Certainly the television images from Birmingham during the 1960s and the man who was responsible for them helped Dr. King and other activists publicize their cause more than a thousand speeches could have done.
