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In the early 1960s, two segregated cities in the deep south were the targets of civil rights demonstrations orchestrated by Martin Luther King, Jr. The tactics used by the demonstrators were similar; the responses of the top-ranking law enforcement officials i ....

Middle of Essay
.... of segregation as "the confrontation between grim-faced, helmeted policemen and their dogs, and black children chanting freedom songs and hymns." (p.163) For a seven-day period in May 1963, the nation was exposed to these and similar pictures (some of which appear in the book). Reports of the incidents in Birmingham moved President John F. Kennedy to remark that "the civil rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. He's helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln." (p. 164) A biography of a man and the times in which he lived stirs readers' sensibilities more than the antiseptic and analytic accounts provided by a textbook or treatise. A b ....