Changing the Civil Rights Narrative in Birmingham

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 12. Narratives and Politics

Abstract

This paper overviews events in Birmingham, Alabama to better understand how the Civil Rights Movement precipitated change in white southern resistance to integration. Events in Birmingham in the spring of 1963 have been widely recognized as a key turning point in that ended legally enforced segregation in the United States. But these events did not immediately lead white southerners to stop resisting desegregation. Relying on close readings of local news sources from the era and ethnographic interviews with whites who, as teens, were in the midst of Civil Rights activities, I examine the transformations in the narratives of southern whites that underlay the shift from violent, organized resistance to passive acceptance. I argue that events in Birmingham constructed a cultural trauma that allowed whites to see that the past was over. I overview three key issues that underlay changes: (1) Reoccurring insurrections by local, underclass blacks in May through September of 1963 promoted images of Civil Rights activists as peaceful mediators undermining their representation as “lawbreakers.” (2). Imagery arising from the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in which four middle class, “innocent” “little girls” were murdered. (3). Silence that allowed for forgetting

Author

• Sandra K. Gill, Gettysburg College