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The streetlights were on. Yet, it was three in the afternoon. The smog was so thick and black the sunlight cannot get through. Yesterday’s newspaper rolls down the street as the wind gently blows, and the white working class tolerates no form of inter-racial mingling. Signs hang in storefronts read, “No Blacks,” and “White Only.” The toilets, drinking fountains, lunch counters, hotels, dressing rooms, and laundry facilities all have “white” and “colored” sections. No matter where you went there was a white elitist lifestyle, blacks were second-class citizens. This was the common lifestyle in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Being the industrial center of the South, it represented all that was extreme, vicious, and violent. By examining the events prior to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s arrest, his time in jail, and the events that occurred immediately after his release, one can see how this case of non-violent direct action lead to a positive social change for the Black American public. In the early months of 1963, most public schools in the south were still segregated; even though racial segregation in public schools was invalidated by the Supreme Courts unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in 19