Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307
The Supreme Court’s decision of 1967 upholding the contempt convictions of King, Shuttlesworth and other ministers for marching in Birmingham on Good Friday and Easter 1963 in defiance of a state court injunction. Its opinions set out the facts of the marches.
The case arose from the injunction that a state circuit court issued on 10 April 1963 against the leaders of the Birmingham demonstrations. The petitioners were sentenced to five days in jail and a fine of fifty dollars for contempt. The Supreme Court affirmed by five votes to four, in an opinion by Justice Stewart, holding that the petitioners should have challenged the injunction in court before disobeying it.
The opinions are a judicial record of the events, drawn from the trial evidence. The majority describes the injunction and the two marches (paragraphs 1–9). Justice Brennan’s dissent names the leaders of the Good Friday march as Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy and Shuttlesworth and says that the police stopped the procession and jailed them (paragraph 77). Chief Justice Warren’s dissent describes the petitioners as Negro ministers (paragraph 46). See the Churches and the Civil Rights Movement.
Cited in
- 16 April 1963, firm date