It was May 3rd, 1963.
Birmingham's jails were filled to overflowing with civil rights protesters and without warning 40% of the student body of the all-black segregated Parker High School walked out of classes and headed downtown as part of the "Children's Crusade" for civil rights.
Birmingham's Public Safety Commissioner, 'Bull' Connor infamously ordered police dogs and fire hoses to be turned on the students, showcasing a southern brutality before the cameras that alienated the rest of the nation and brought many people of conscience into the Civil Rights Movement.
Almost exactly 61 years ago, I came home from school one afternoon to find our copy of LIFE magazine on the coffee table. I was a little more than halfway to my eleventh birthday.
I sat on the couch and flipped it open. There in the centerfold of the magazine was a two-page picture that you can see above: White Birmingham officer Dick Middleton setting a vicious police dog on the reasonably well-dressed 15-year-old Walter Gadsden.
Taken by Associated Press photographer Bill Hudson, the photo ran on the front pages of the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times on May 4th, and later that month in the LIFE magazine that landed in our living room.
The photo and others were run in papers in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. The turning of police dogs on children did not play well. The world was suddenly watching Birmingham, which, right-or-wrong, became a proxy for the entire nation, its violence, and the legalized denial and oppression of its black citizens.
Hudson's photos had a tremendous impact. There was also television footage of part of the encounter between the authorities in Birmingham and the students.
At age ten, I had not seen any of that coverage until I opened LIFE that afternoon.
As ten and eleven-year-olds do, I was just beginning to look outside the confines, comforts, and conflicts of my family home into the larger world and beginning to ask who I would be out there.
And it was then that I encountered Hudson's photograph.
LIFE was a large format magazine that seemed to be on every suburban coffee table in our Alexandria VA. neighborhood. The size of the double-page spread photo was considerable. The photo was unavoidable; the viciousness it depicted, undeniable.
I stared at it.
For a long time.
And here is what I saw:
Everyone behind the police dogs and fire hoses were white. I am white.
Everyone before the dogs and hoses were black, young, dressed for school, if not church.
After a long time looking at the image, I found myself asking the question, "If I were there, would I be behind the dogs and fire hoses, or in front of them?"
I imagine that this was the work Hudson's photos did for many of us. Those images erased the sidelines; one had to choose a side.
And at a little over ten-and-a-half, with the early heat of summer and the annual school vacation bearing down on me, I sat there before that image and knew I would never, ever be able to put myself behind the dogs.
I couldn't then.
And I still can't.
May the gods' blessings fall on Bill Hudson. He knew what he was doing, and he knew what he did.
A grateful nation turns its eyes to you.
Scott Ainslie
May 3, 2024
https://ScottAinslie.Substack.com
https://CattailMusic.com
https://Patreon.com/ScottAinslie
“Those images erased the sidelines; one had to choose a side.“
Well said, thank you for saying it.
Really moving. You and I are about the same age—I too remember the impact of those images.