Maime King: Champion of the Children’s Movement

By: Aaron McCarthy, SCLC Detroit Chapter President

The National Office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. Charles Steel Jr. joined SCLC-Detroit in bidding farewell to one of Alabama’s and Detroit’s most famous civil rights era heroines, and one of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's most recognizable participants and heroines in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Birmingham Campaign and the 1963 Children’s March and Crusade: Mother Maime King Chalmers who passed away on November 29, 2022 in Detroit Michigan where she made her home after her iconic participation in one of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s most famous Campaigns.

Mother Maime Zwadie King’s famous image of being brutally battered by the powerful hospitalizing force of fire hoses, after being chased across the street from Kelly Ingram Park, to a locked doctors office doorway, by vicious police dogs, turned on her by the self proclaimed racist and public safety officer Theopollis Eugene Bull Connors, who had personally identified and singled her out, re-directing the high powered fire hoses on her, permanently damaging the hearing in her left ear while calling out her name, as told by her recently in an interview.

As an up front leader in all of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights protests, Bull Connors knew Maime King and in his mind had falsely connected Maime King to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a relative, and in her own words: ‘was afraid of her” and directed his attention to her at every local protest that she attended, and as an upfront leader she attended all of them, and was arrested several times before her famous image was caught on international news programs around the world, causing international outrage.

Fed up with the extreme segregation and racist treatment inflicted upon black citizens of Birminhham Alabama, it’s white only water fountains, it’s white only restroons, it’s white only restaurants, it’s white only lunch counters, back door only service, and not being able to try on clothing, or return them to department stores if they didn’t fit; former SCLC National President Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and his local Birmingham civil rights organization: Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, had planned to boycott all white merchants and businesses one year earlier during the second busiest season of the year, Easter, but because of the up coming Mayoral election that moderately liberal candidate Albert Botwell defeated self proclaimed racist Theopolis Eugene Bull Connors in, the boycott was cancelled that year.

With Dr. King and The Southern Christian Leadership Conference joining and expanding the impact of Alabama Christian Movement for Human Right's intentions on boycotting the businesses of white Birmingham merchants by adding nonviolence training and mass organizing meetings at the 16th street Baptist Church, with church kneeling and activities that made the local effort a much more impacting protest and march.

Mother Maime King and her entire family met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and The Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Direct Action and Nonviolence Education Director, James Bevel, to sign up and receive nonviolent marching training to participate in a peaceful march and protest being planned to march to Mayor Botwells office, and on into downtown to protest and boycott white Birmingham businesses for the segregated conditions and segregated treatment of black Birmingham Alabama citizens.

The idea of utilizing children, an untapped source of protest power, was presented by SCLC National Direct Action and Nonviolence Education Director James Bevel at a mass meeting, attended by Mother Maime King and her entire family, who were also members of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and regularly made lunches and brought food to protest participants, during protests. She was present when Dr. King told parents to let the children go if they wanted to be arrested too, and that they would be alright. She was also present and participating on April 2nd 1963 when over a thousand students skipped school to join the protest, and was also sprayed with high powered waterhoses and hit with police batons, and threatened with vicious police dogs, and was arrested right along with adults as they attemptef to peacefully march into downtown Birmingham.

On April 3rd 1963 the following day while Mother Maime King and another group of protesters gathered in Kelly Ingram Park, almost five thousand more children skipped school and joined the historic march and were arrested and held in warehouses, pig pens, and anywhere they could put them, to take them out of the protest that continued to grow without stopping, resulting in the name: Children’s Crusade and March of 1963, with Dr. King himself being arrested on April 12, 1963, for continuing the march after it was ordered illegal, resulting in the famous April 16th “Letter From a Birmingham Jail, all of which was a part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s 1963 Birmingham Campaign, that by the end of the campaign would have adopted names such as the Birmingham Truce, the Birminhham Movement, and the Birmingham Confrontation, all of which the iconic image of Mother Maime King Chalmers whose iconic image caught on international and national news channels all over the world being brutally battered by the hospitalizing force of high powered water hoses with five thousand black school skipping children joining the march and protest that was originally started by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and was expanded to the point of world wide recognition and outrage, resulting in the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham Alabama, as well as the 1963 march on Washington that she also attended, as part of the Movement that led to the 1964 Voting Rights Act, played a major part in all of it.

Spending five more days in jail without food, Mother Maime King Chalmers was released and immediately returned to the protest again, even with the lost of hearing in her left ear, where the high pressure and force from the water viciously pounding against her head and body, revealing an image to the world that caused international outrage and the intervention by President John F. Kennedy and the Justice department.

Mother Maime King Chambers having been arrested on several different occassions during this historic campaign, and never forgetting the invaluable lessons learned from attending every single mass meeting called by the Reverend James Bevel and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., continued her life as an activist fifty nine more years after her famous image with two men that she didn’t know stepping in front of her trying to take the force of the water off of her young body and causing the international outrage, that helped the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with it’s successful desegregation of Birmighham Alabama, the state that Dr. King once called “the most segregated state in the country. ”Paying homage to her and showing how much she was appreciated, loved, and respected by the City of Detroit, a helicopter flew over and dropped thousands of rose pedals on her casket when it was being loaded into the hearst that carried her body to her grave site.

Continuing to travel around the country and world educating and sharing the reality and truisms of the civil rights era and stories of her Birminhham Campaign and Children’s March and Crusade on programs, in colleges, and universities, on television, and on programs like the one she just recently appeared in on September 10, 2022 in Silver Springs Pennsylvania, where the Harmony Symphony Foundation presented her with a much deserved “Living Legend Award”.

Mother Maime King Chalmer's love for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has never left her as was evident when her daughter Lasuria King Allman contacted Reverend McCarthy personally and asked him to speak at her mother's funeral, and at her Charles Wright African American Museum Memorial service for at least twenty minutes, as the representative of her beloved Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and to not present The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Proclaimation until her memorial service at the Charle Wright Acrican American Musem instead of presenting it with the ones being presented by other organizations at her funeral service, because of it’s special meaning to the family.

SCLC-Detroit President: Reverend Aaron McCarthy: representing the National Office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Civil Rights Organization responsible for the historic Children’s March and Crusade, the Birmingham Campaign, the Birmingham Movement, the Birmingham Truce, and paying respect to former SCLC National President: Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and his Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and the desegregation of Birmingham Alabama was spoke for twenty minutes while TV2 and Channel 7 news captured twenty minutes of Southern Christian Leadership Conference history and what Mother Maime King and her participation in the Birmingham Campaign and Children’s Crusade and March meant to the Historicity of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the desegregation of Birmingham Alabama before presented the family of Mother Maime Zwadie King Chalmers with a proclaimation from the National Office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. Charles Steele Jr: S loCLC National President and CEO.

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