The civil rights struggle shifted gears from integrating lunch counters and bus terminal bathrooms to attaining the more fundamental right to vote during 1963. A series of courageous events attempting to end segregation played out in Alabama and in particular, Birmingham, from spring through the fall. Yet the most dramatic scene in the centennial year of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation unfolded on August 28th in Washington, D.C. Over 200,000 demonstrators sang "We shall overcome" as they marched on the Mall between the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Europeans and U.S. armed forces abroad witnessed the March on Washington via Telstar and heard Martin Luther King, Jr. subpoena the conscience of the nation with his moving "I have a dream" speech. The purpose of the March on Washington was to garner support for pending civil rights legislation and it did.
Young Fehr was ashamed for his country needlessly taking a black eye in world opinion for our own unjust Apartheid policies. As a cold war tactic, the communists could point to the South and claim they were more humane than the Klan, the segregationist governors and the Bull Connors'. And, in a less analytical moral level, it just wasn't right, either! Here we were 100 years after all the Civil War bloodshed to eradicate slavery and we're still beating, bombing and killing in the South to hold onto racial segregation and to suppress Negro voting rights. There sure is a thin veneer to civility. How could white GIs look fellow Negro troops in the eye while back home the white southern segregationists made a mockery of justice, equality and democracy? Yet, the Dixiecrats retained much power in the seniority laden Congress stymieing legislative progress on civil rights and voting rights bills.
Birmingham, Ala. (as it used to be abbreviated prior to ZIP codes):
14 January 1963 - Alabama Governor George Wallace vows "segregation now, segregation forever" in his inaugural speech.
03 April 1963 - Sit ins and demonstrations are initiated by the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC).
11 April 1963 - The City of Birmingham obtains injunctions against demonstrations.
12-20 April 1963 - Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy are jailed for marching in defiance of the injunction.
02 May 1963 - The nation is appalled as 958 Negro children go to jail for marching.
03 May 1963 - Police Chief "Bull" Connor uses police dogs and orders high-pressure fire hoses turned on children to keep them from marching out of the 16th Street Baptist Church and the Negro section.
06 May 1963 - A thousand children and adults are arrested bringing the total to about 2,500.
07 May 1963 - Thousands of Negro children enter downtown "white" Birmingham.
09 May 1963 - Negotiations lead to an end of much of Birmingham's segregation.
11 May 1963 - The KKK rally near Birmingham and commit bombings inciting a riot.
16 May 1963 - Sit ins and marches ensue throughout the south for the next 10 weeks;
758 demonstrations in 186 cities
14,733 arrests in 11 southern states
13 September 1963 - Alabama Governor George Wallace announces his candidacy for the Presidency.
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15 September 1963 - Four young Negro girls are killed in a bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Elsewhere in 1963:
21 February 1963 - Medicare legislation is submitted to Congress although spadework for the proposal occurred as far back as the last three years of President Truman's Administration.
March 1963 - In Britain, intelligence agent Kim Philby defects to the USSR, and the John Profumo sex scandal causes a governmental crisis.
18 March 1963 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that an indigent defendant in a criminal trial must be given the assistance of a lawyer to have a fair trial; Gideon v Wainright, 372 US 335 (1963).
01 June 1963 - Quang Duc becomes the first Buddhist monk to self-immolate in downtown Saigon to protest the repressive policies of the Diem brothers. By the end of 1963, six more monks committed self-immolation.
11 June 1963 -- Alabama Governor George Wallace "stands in the school house door" to block the entrance of the state university to African-American students. He later backs down in the face of National Guard troops called in by President Kennedy who proclaims that segregation is "morally wrong" and it is "time to act..."
26 June 1963 - Fehr listens at work via Armed Forces Radio to President Kennedy deliver his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech to an immense crowd near the Berlin Wall. JFK was so popular in Germany he could have been elected Chancellor in a landslide!
July 1963 -- "ZIP" codes (Zone Improvement Plan) are initiated.
21 August - Vietnamese Special Forces raid Buddhist temples throughout the South killing many and arresting thousands, which outraged the Kennedy Administration.
30 August 1963 - The Washington, DC-to-Moscow Direct Communications Link or "Hotline" is implemented under President John F. Kennedy shortly after the Cuban missile crisis.
September 1963 -- CBS & NBC expand network news from 15 to 30 minutes
02 October 1963 -- President Kennedy decides to begin the withdrawal of 1,000 advisors from Vietnam; historians and assassination conspiracy theorists will later debate fascinating details.
October 1963 - JFK signs the first limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
01 November 1963 -- The U.S. secretly sanctions a coup against the Diem government ruling South Vietnam, but the Vietnamese military coup leaders go overboard and also assassinate the Diem brothers.
22 November 1963 - JFK is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
November 1963 - Troop levels in Vietnam reach 16,000.
Fall 1963 - Sandy Koufax and the Brooklyn Dodgers sweep the Yanks.
1963 - Sports greats Bob Cousy of the Celtics and St. Louis Cardinal Stan "the Man" Musial retire. (Fehr in his Little League days had witnessed Musial hit a homer in Philadelphia's Shibe Park against the Phillies, circa 1953.)
1963 -Lava lamps, audio-cassettes, and Valium arrive on the scene.
1963 - Pulitzer Prize for General, Non-Fiction, awarded to The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman. AG2 Fehr eagerly consumed this insightful historical tome.
1963 - The Academy Award for best picture went to "Tom Jones."
1963 -- Books included The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, and Cat's Cradle by Curt Vonnegut.
The baby boomer generation was blessed with a wonderfully rich variety of popular music - not just rock 'n roll, but ballads, the love songs, soul, instrumentals and country. The words to this genre were usually intelligible, too.
Every generation in the bloom of its life must feel that the sounds surrounding his or her daily existence are incomparably the greatest of all time. Those electronic waves register on the synapses of the mortal hard drive generating an insuppressible, veritable pop-up calendar and mental date stamp complete with ersatz mood elevators. The radio was usually on in the barracks rooms as those youngsters shined shoes, Brasso-ed the belt buckles, did the uniform ironing on a blanket atop a table and when they just sat down to compose letters home. The "puter" now emits timeless waves from the genius of Ray Charles as the keyboard clacks.
In 1963, what a splendid variety there was with hits by Ray Charles (Busted), Sam Cooke (Another Saturday Night), Rufus Thomas (Walkin the Dog), Jack Ely's Louie, Louie, or Peter, Paul & Mary singing Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind and Puff the Magic Dragon.
Pennsylvania's coal-region crooner Bobby Vinton (Vintonkowski?) sang (Blue on Blue and Blue Velvet), Allan Sherman had his "specialty" humorous song (Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh), Rolf Harris did (Tie me Kangaroo Down, Sport).
Wayne Newton introduced America to German (Danke Schoen), and everybody enjoyed Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto which hit #1 on the charts. The upbeat Trini Lopez inspired the country with a message of peace and justice (If I Had A Hammer). And there was always a little country with Johnny Cash (Ring of Fire). So many. Lenny Welch's plaintive love ballad Since I Fell For You in juxtaposition to the frenetic pace of Wipe Out by the Surfaris. How 'bout Stevie Wonder and Fingertips, Part 2, Martha and the Vandellas (Quicksand), the immortal Nat King Cole (Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days), the Four Seasons (Walk Like a Man), or Jimmy Soul (If You Wanna Be Happy)?
Back in '63, John Denver was singing with the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Beatles recorded their first album (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) and Elvis Presley was huge. Bo Diddley and Otis Redding also had their first albums. Can't forget the Beach Boys who had several hits that year including Do You Remember?
In Sunny Zwei, The Rhythm of the Rain by the Cascades was always appropriate. With roommates from West Virginia and North Carolina, Fehr was exposed to plenty of country in the barracks courtesy of the AFN.