1963 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

"I have a dream," says Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a ceremony held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., January 1 to commemorate the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation: "I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

The U.S. Supreme Court orders that indigent defendants in all criminal cases be provided by the states with the services of defense attorneys. Florida drifter Clarence Earl Gideon, now 52, was charged in 1961 with having broken into a Panama City poolroom with intent to commit a misdemeanor, he could not afford a lawyer, argued his own case before a jury, and insisted he was innocent; the local court sentenced him to 5 years' imprisonment, and when his demand for a writ of habeas corpus was denied he wrote from the state prison to Washington. The March 18 ruling in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright overturns the court's 1942 decision in Betts v. Brady. Tennessee-born Washington, D.C., lawyer Abe Fortas, 52, has argued the case before the court; a protégé of Justice William O. Douglas, he is a friend of Vice President Johnson and will be appointed to the Supreme Court in 1965.

Civil-rights worker Coretta Scott King places a call Easter Sunday, April 14, to President Kennedy asking for the release of her husband, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has played a leading role in organizing a march on Washington April 12 to demand more civil rights for minorities. King has led 50 volunteers despite concerns that his probable arrest would seriously hinder vital fund-raising efforts. He and his Alabama-born chief aide, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, 37, have been placed in solitary confinement.

Mississippi activist Fannie Lou Hamer is arrested while returning home from a civil-rights meeting at Winona and beaten severely by her jailers (see 1962). Some of the injuries she sustains will prove permanent (see 1964).

The U.S. Supreme Court rules May 20 that convictions by lower courts in cases of sit-ins to protest discriminatory practices by retail establishments were unconstitutional.

Alabama politician George C. (Corley) Wallace, 43, takes office as governor and says in his inaugural address (written by Ku Klux Klansman Asa Carter), "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Defeated by extremist John Patterson when he ran for governor in 1958, Wallace determined never to be "out-segged" again, received official KKK support, and won by a landslide. Wallace blocks the door of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium at Tuscaloosa June 11 and refuses to allow Assistant Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach to escort Vivian Malone and James A. Hood inside. President Kennedy immediately federalizes Alabama's National Guard, whose general Henry V. Graham appears in green battle attire; he tells the governor that it is his "sad duty" to order him to step aside, Wallace complies after making a statement, and the two black students are enrolled at the university despite vows by Gov. Wallace that no blacks shall be admitted. Malone will defy harassment and in 1965 will become the university's first black graduate.

NAACP leader Medgar Evers, 37, is shot to death June 12 in the doorway of his home at Jackson, Miss., immediately after a presidential broadcast on civil rights. Two juries will fail to convict white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith of the murder, but he will be convicted in 1994 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

President Kennedy asks Congress June 19 to enact far-reaching civil-rights legislation that will include provisions to bar discrimination in the use of privately owned public facilities.

Civil-rights advocate and 1956 vice-presidential candidate Sen. Estes Kefauver (D. Tenn.) dies at Bethesda, Md., August 10 at age 60.

More than 200,000 black and white Americans conduct a "march on Washington" August 28 to demonstrate support for civil rights.

New Orleans must desegregate all of its public parks, playgrounds, community centers, and cultural facilities, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rules.

Three Alabama cities desegregate public schools despite Gov. Wallace's continued opposition. While most whites accept the change, four black Alabama schoolchildren are killed and 19 people injured September 15 when a bomb explodes at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church while 200 are attending Sunday services. The church has been a staging area for anti-segregation demonstrations, but the deaths of Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, provoke racial riots, and police dogs are used to attack civil-rights demonstrators. Ku Klux Klan leader Robert Chambliss has gone to the church with three other KKK members in Thomas E. Blanton Jr.'s turquoise Chevrolet, with Confederate flags flying from its two rear antennae, and planted dynamite with a timer in the church basement; Chambliss will be convicted in 1977 of having perpetrated the outrage and will die in prison in 1985. Black schoolboy Virgil Ware, 13, is killed later the same day outside Birmingham while riding on the handlebars of his 16-year-old brother's bicycle; white schoolboy Michael Lee Farley, 16, has threatened him from the window of his car after attending a segregationist rally and has handed a gun to his friend Larry Joe Sims, also 16. Both attend an all-white school, although Sims comes from a family that has sympathized with the plight of blacks; one will be sentenced to 6 months' in a juvenile detention center, the other to probation. A Birmingham police officer shoots black schoolboy Johnnie Robinson, 16, in the back September 15 after Robinson throws rocks at a car painted with racist graffiti; the officer will never face charges.

Minister of justice B. J. (Balthazar Johannes) Vorster puts through legislation that makes all South Africans subject to arrest without charge for periods of up to 90 days at a time (see 1962); the only vote registered in the House of Assembly opposing the new law is Helen Suzman. Police raid a Rivonia farmhouse just north of Johannesburg July 12, arrest Walter Sisulu, and find a copy of African National Congress (ANC) leader Nelson R. Mandela's plan for carrying out sabotage (see 1964; politics, 1959; 1966).

Morocco and Congo grant women the right to vote on the same basis as men. Iran grants voting rights to women.