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In the first half of 1963, civil rights leaders chose Birmingham as the target of "Project C" (for confrontation), aiming to force businesses to integrate lunch counters and employ more blacks. Despite threats from Police Chief " Bull" Connor that there would be "blood running down the streets of Birmingham," pickets, sit-ins and marches sparked mass arrests. Over 2000 protesters flooded the jails; one was Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail after being branded as an extremist by local white clergymen. Connor's use of high-pressure hoses, cattleprods and dogs against demonstrators acted as a potent catalyst of support. Pictures of snarling German shepherds sinking their teeth into the flesh of schoolkids were transmitted around the world, and led to an agreement between civil rights leaders and businesses in June 1963. Success in Birmingham sparked demonstrations in 186 other cities, which culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting racial segregation.

The headquarters for the campaign, the 16th Street Baptist Church, on the corner of Sixth Avenue, was the site of a sickening Klan bombing on September 15, 1963, which killed four young black girls attending a Bible class. Open daily, the church's basement contains a small shrine dedicated to the murdered girls, and displays a number of related art works. Across the road, prettily landscaped Kelly Ingram Park, the site of many huge rallies during the Sixties and now home to some of the city's dispossessed - many of them African Americans - has a Freedom Walk, lined with several impressive sculptures that memorialize the city's turbulent history of race relations.

Nearby, the admirable Civil Rights Institute , 520 16th St (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $6), is an affecting attempt to interpret the factors that led to such violence and racial hatred in the US. Exhibits re-create life in a segregated city, complete with a burned-out bus and heart-rending videos of bus boycotts and the March on Washington.