
Miles College
In 1962, Miles College students organized the “Selective-Buying Campaign.” Led by students Frank Dukes and Jonathan McPherson, the campaign galvanized Birmingham’s African-American community and encouraged people to withhold their spending money from stores that refused to hire black clerks or to do away with segregated bathrooms and water fountains.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth used this campaign to convince Dr. Martin Luther King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to choose Birmingham as the site for the “Project C,” a confrontational effort to undermine the city’s segregationist policies. Related demonstrations produced televised images of the city’s police using dogs to attack young unarmed demonstrators and firefighters using hoses to knock down children. These media images profoundly effected how others around the world viewed the United States and helped lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.