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: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Birmingham mayor pardons 1960s civil rights protesters

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

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[JURIST] The mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, on Tuesday pardoned 2,500 people arrested in the city during nonviolent civil rights protests in the 1960s. Announcing the pardons at a city council meeting, Mayor Larry Langford said that the city had an obligation to ask for forgiveness because it had "wronged so many." Langford acknowledged that many eligible people viewed their arrest records as a "badge of courage and a sign of the struggle" and would not be inclined to apply for a pardon. Bishop and civil rights leader Calvin Woods symbolically accepted the pardon on behalf of jailed protesters. In April 2006, Alabama Governor Bob Riley authorized pardons for Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists convicted of violating Jim Crow laws in the state. Rosa Parks helped trigger the civil rights movement across the US after she was arrested in Montgomery, AL, in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).