Thursday, May 2nd, is “D-Day” as students “ditch” class to march for justice. In disciplined groups of 50, children singing freedom songs march out of 16th Street Baptist church two-by-two. When each group is arrested, another takes its place.
There are not enough cops to contain them, and police reinforcements are hurriedly summoned. By the end of the day almost 1,000 kids have been jailed.
The next day, Friday May 3rd, a thousand more students cut class to assemble at 16th Street church. With the jails already filled to capacity, and the number of marchers growing, Eugene “Bull” Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety in charge of the police and fire departments, tries to suppress the movement with violence. Instead of arresting the first group of marchers he orders his fire department to disperse them with firehoses.
But the students hold their ground, singing “Freedom” to the tune of the ancient hymn “Amen.” Connor orders the water pressure increased to knock them off their feet and wash them away. Still singing, the young protesters sit down on the pavement and hunch their backs against the torrent.
Connor brings up "monitor guns," high-pressure nozzles mounted on tripods and fed by two hoses that are used to fight the worst fires. They're capable of knocking bricks out of a wall at 100 feet. The students are washed tumbling down the street like leaves in a flood. Outraged, the hundreds of Black on-lookers in Kelly Ingram park — including many parents — throw rocks and bottles at the cops and firemen. Meanwhile, more groups of marchers are taking different routes out of 16th Street church, dodging around the firehoses and heading for downtown. The cops scramble to block them, arresting those who reach City Hall or the downtown stores. There is no room in the jails and the overflow prisoners are incarcerated at the county fairgrounds.
To contain and intimidate the demonstrators and the angry crowd, Connor brings up his K9 Corps of eight vicious attack dogs. As John Lewis recalled it later, "We didn't fully comprehend at first what was happening. We were witnessing police violence and brutality Birmingham-style: unfortunately for Bull Connor, so was the rest of the world." Television that night, and newspapers world-wide the next morning, show images of young children marching up to snarling police dogs, cops clubbing women to the ground, and high-pressure hoses sweeping young bodies into the street.
