The SNCC also organized local campaigns with NAACP branches to win voting rights for blacks and to end segregation in public places . One community that made the national spotlight was Albany , Ga . In 1962 , King and the SCLC entered the Albany struggle . It failed to gain significant results , however , and branded King with a humiliating defeat .
The nation ' s focus then turned to Birmingham , Ala . Since 1956 , the Rev . Fred Shuttlesworth of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights had been leading the struggle against racial discrimination there . For decades , local blacks had faced a staunch segregationist in the person of Eugene " Bull " Connor , the city ' s commissioner of public safety ; he was chiefly responsible for Birmingham ' s reputation as the " most thoroughly segregated city in the United States ." King arrived in the spring of 1963 and with Shuttlesworth led nonviolent demonstrations . Connor ' s use of police dogs and fire hoses against protesters , an act that remains infamous , helped awaken President John Kennedy ' s administration to the need for civil rights legislation . Following Kennedy ' s assassination , President Lyndon Johnson maneuvered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress . Representing a major victory for African Americans , the 1964 legislation outlawed segregation in public places and prohibited racial and gender discrimination in employment practices .
Front Cover Feature We Shall Over Come Civil Rights 1964 - 2014 Freedom Rider Bus Jacksonville , Florida August 2014