Bull Connor was a segregationist politician in the Deep South during the 1960s, known for using police dogs and fire hoses on African-American citizens and Freedom Fighters. He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and opposed civil rights reforms. He instigated the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was the director of the Alabama Public Service Commission until his death in 1973. His legacy includes serious abuses of civil authority and serves as a reminder of a violent and shameful period in American history.
One of the most notorious segregationists in the Deep South during the 1960s, Theophilus Eugene Connor began his political career as a Democrat but was instrumental in creating serious rifts within that party over the issue of race relations. He is best remembered as the Public Safety Commissioner for the City of Birmingham, Alabama. His tenure is remembered as one marked by the use of police dogs and fire hoses on Freedom Fighters, African-American citizens who gathered in public assembly, and anyone Connor saw as championing the desegregation of the city.
Born on July 11, 1897, Bull Connor entered the political arena in the 1920s. In 1936, Connor was elected police commissioner for the city of Birmingham, a position he held until 1952. After a four-year hiatus, he returned to office in 1956. Around the same time, Bull Connor gained prominence in the Alabama State Democratic Party, a connection that led him to clash with the national party over a number of social issues, including racial segregation.
Bull Connor often used the approach of describing those who disagreed with his political and social stances as communists. For example, Connor cited Communist leanings within the Southern Negro Youth Congress as reasons for raiding a 1948 meeting of the group and arresting Glen Taylor, an Idaho Senator and guest speaker for the event, with l allegation of violating the city’s segregation laws. Connor expressed similar sentiments when he led the Alabama caucus out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention, largely because of the civil rights reforms that were on the agenda for discussion at the convention.
Due to a controversy over Bull Connor’s involvement in a personal relationship with his private secretary, Connor chose not to run for re-election to his seat in 1952. However, he returned in 1956 and re-established his administration once again, with little or no variation in its approach. Connor seemed to be especially careful to prevent a Birmingham-like occurrence of the recent bus boycott that took place in Montgomery, Alabama. His tactic went as far as breaking into a meeting between church ministers in Birmingham and Montgomery and arresting them on vagrancy charges.
Bull Connor continued to be a prominent civic officer in Birmingham into the 1960s. Known for being a member of the Ku Klux Klan and an ardent opponent of the American civil rights movement, Connor often seemed to turn a blind eye to the actions of law enforcement and others against civil rights activists and advocates. His actions did much to establish a national reputation for Birmingham as the most racially divided city in the country. Connor instigated the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963 and unwittingly allowed King time to write his famous Birmingham Jail Letter, considered one of the most important documents in the history of the nonviolent struggle for racial equality.
A change in the structure of Birmingham city government in 1962 resulted in the abolition of the commission post held by Bull Connor. Attempts to run for mayor of the city were unsuccessful. However, Bull Connor became the director of the Alabama Public Service Commission in 1964, a post he held until 1972. A stroke in late 1966 confined him to a wheelchair, but he continued to oversee the responsibility of him. An event as important as his tenure as Public Service Commissioner was the implementation of the use of 911 as the national emergency assistance telephone number, with the first use taking place in Haleyville, Alabama, on February 16, 1968.
After suffering a second stroke in February 1973, Bull Connor began a decline that ended in his death on March 10, 1973. His legacy includes some of the most serious abuses of civil authority in U.S. history, and he continues to serve as a reminder of one of the most violent and shameful periods in American history.
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