In the middle of the city streets police have turned fire hoses, gas, clubs and dogs on a peaceful protest group.
Unrest at this scale is normally front page news. In Birmingham in 1963 it was not.
"You cannot deny people the news," said Hank Klibanoff, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author. "You cannot deny people the truth."
Klibanoff is co-author of the book "The Race Beat," and he spoke at Auburn University to a nearly full Tichenor Room 215, Thursday afternoon.
His lecture was titled "Birmingham 1963: Pride, Prejudice and the Perversion of the Truth in News."
The lecture focused on the importance of the civil rights movement in Birmingham and the Southern media's shortcomings in covering stories related to race relations.
"I don't want us to miss a chance to talk about what happened 50 years ago," Klibanoff said.
In 1954 the Supreme Court heard the case of Brown v.Board of Education for the second time, and it ruled in favor of desegregation.
In 1955 it was ordered that the ruling be carried out, and the schools be desegregated.
By 1963 Alabama schools were still segregated.
"It was an incredibly difficult time," Klibanoff said. "It was a time of great fear."
Klibanoff grew up in Florence, attended segregated schools and said he experienced the influence of the press first hand.
"I grew up as a newspaper reader," Klibanoff said. "I was getting my world view from reading the paper."
He said that the progressive nature of the northern Alabama newspapers created a more progressive culture.
Klibanoff said that he considered the Birmingham newspapers to be passive, and he cited examples of placing the now infamous May 3, 1963, clash between police and protestors as proof.
The violence that ensued that day was in reaction to a protest march in Birmingham led by Martin Luther King Jr.
"He was told people need to see what happens when violence meets non-violence," Klibanoff said.
Klibanoff said that the presence of Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor guaranteed confrontation.
Many freedom marchers were beaten or jailed.
National coverage of the event caused public outrage and prompted John F. Kennedy to give his first civil rights speech.
Klibanoff said that the southern press chose to not give the violent confrontation ample coverage.
"They had it in their power to do the right thing, but they didn't," Klibanoff said. "People of the South were not well served by their newspapers."
Despite their past shortcomings, Klibanoff said some of the same papers which in the past avoiding covering the civil rights movement are now involved with efforts such as The Civil Rights Cold Case Project, an organization that helps to solve past civil rights crimes.
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