As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group’s “Birmingham Manifesto, ” the campaign was “a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive ” (ACMHR, 3 April 1963).
In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year.
