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Eugene "Bull" Connors was the commissioner of public safety in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. He was a racist, and he prided himself on his ability to keep the Negro in his place. Entrenched in a key position of the Birmingham power structure, Connors held contempt for rights for the Negro as well as defiance for federal governmental authority. He was brutal, violent man, who did nothing to supress any of the racist brutalities against the Negroes in his community. Murders, castrations, mobbing, and bombings were common under his leadership.

Bull Connor believed himself so powerful that he arrested a United States senator for walking through a door marked "colored." He also arrested the manager of the local bus station, who attempted to implement the desegregation law on the buses.

During the sixty-five days of nonviolent actions, people of all ages, from little children to senior citizens, were arrested, clubbed, attacked by dogs, and blasted with fire hoses. His vicious brutality was displayed on televisions and newspapers for the world to see. At the end of the Birmingham campaign, Connor and his fellow commissioners were ruled to have been defeated in the previous election, and were subsequently put out of office.

Source(s)

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr