Jesus is the Answer (Lessons Learned from 1963 Birmingham)
“I’ve seen crosses burning in fields outside the city—the people there—they had on white sheets. It was very frightening. I was just 16,” Anita Hutton Jefferson recalls about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s and 60s.
A young Anita Jefferson grew up in pre-civil rights Birmingham.
Jefferson marched in the 1963 protests in downtown Birmingham to call attention to the racism inherent in the south at the time.
“Birmingham was the most heavily segregated place in the Deep South, because nothing was integrated. We went to school separately; we had to ride the bus separately. There were two water fountains, one for whites and one for blacks. There was no such thing as a black policeman or bus-driver either. And all of the good-paying jobs went to the whites; lots of people had to leave our town just to get better jobs.”
“My mom was not even properly treated when she was in labor. When she got to the hospital, she was not put in a room but was left in the hallway,” she continued.
Jefferson, oldest of nine children, lived in “the projects” of Birmingham during her school years. She helped her mother care for her siblings while her father worked as a laborer for the city. Despite the intolerance present in the city and surrounding area, their neighborhood was the setting for an idyllic childhood.
“The projects were a decent place to live. We didn’t have any fighting in the project. Growing up there, it was like a day in the park. We just had a good time together,” she said.
“Both my parents were blind, but they could do anything anybody else could. They met while attending the Talladega School for the Blind (Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind) and got married. My father also pastored the Church of God in Christ in Jasper, Alabama. He ran revivals all over Alabama and some of them out of state. He was one of the original Five Blind Boys of Alabama (an American gospel group founded in 1939), and they sang all over.”
Jefferson, spiritual mentor for Intentional Faith, remembers her parents instilling a deep Christian faith in all nine of their children.
“My parents were always dependent on God. It was like I grew up in church. We were always praying in our house. We were wholly dependent on God. The black community, at that time, was the same way, We spent a lot of money at the stores downtown to look our best for church, especially Easter, she said.
According to Jefferson, the 1963 “Birmingham Campaign,” which spanned April 3-May 10 of that year, was part of a boycott of downtown merchants for that reason. Black citizens were frequent customers of the merchants, but some catered to only whites or only blacks, posting “whites only” or “colored only” signs in their windows. Protests were meticulously organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) of which Martin Luther King Jr. was the president at the time. Many sit-ins, marches and protests in various forms occurred during the campaign, but Jefferson participated in what has been dubbed the “Children’s Crusade” on May 2. Organizers bussed in elementary through high-school students from all over the city to form human barricades in the downtown district.
Prayer was key.
“We all assembled at the 16th Street Baptist Church. There the leaders talked with us and prayed with us. They gave us protest signs and our routes. We marched to our location, then hundreds of us formed a square to stop traffic at major intersections. We got on our knees and prayed—especially when “Bull” Connor came with his bullhorn. He told us we had to leave. The more he said, the louder our prayers got! He got in his car and drove toward us. We did not move. God prepared us for that.”
Eventually, “Bull” Theophilus Eugene Connor, commissioner of public safety for the city of Birmingham at that time, got in his car and left, according to Jefferson. The police used high-pressure water hoses and police attack dogs to dissuade and disperse protesters and bystanders.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the civil Rights Act into law as Martin Luther King Jr. looked on.
Thousands of students were jailed and later freed, but images of these brutal scenes were captured by photographer Charles Moore and printed in Life magazine, The Washington Post and The New York Times inspired worldwide support for the issue. When the members of the Ku Klux Klan were convicted for the September 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in which 4 African-American girls were killed and 22 others wounded, progress in desegregation slowly began to occur in the city.
Jefferson credits God with bringing her “people” through that time, and implicates Satan as the instigator of the wrongs that were prevalent then and fueled 2020’s protests and riots.
Jefferson encourages a student during a Bible study at one of IF’s partnering organizations.
“As protesters then, we were not allowed to be violent. We all knew that MLK was about peace. There was no looting then, so I don’t know how to address the rioting and looting now. It’s all happening because of sin” she said.
“Evil is inside of all people. It’s placed there by the Enemy. God allows these things to happen to use them for good. Sin is everywhere, and it will run its course, but God is speaking to the believer to humble ourselves, to get ourselves right. The believer has strayed away, just like Israel. God’s trying to get us to examine ourselves and turn from sin. Then he’ll forgive us,” she said.
“In 2 Chronicles 7:14 the Bible says, ‘If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land,’” Jefferson quoted.
“God wants us to live our lives pleasing unto Him. Jesus is the answer.”
If you would like to have the peace that Jefferson possesses through a faith in, and daily walk with, Jesus Christ, please connect with us through our website or on Facebook. Developing a reliance on God for true contentment involves a relationship with the Savior.
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