When Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signed the nation’s harshest anti-immigrant law in June, I was correctly quoted in the media as saying that the law is “so oppressive that even Bull Connor would be impressed.” The Washington Examiner’s Gregory Kane has since made a minor cottage industry out of disparaging me and this statement. Over the course of four columns, three of which appeared in the Examiner, he’s called this statement “a pathetic spectacle,” “demagogic drivel,” “a cheap shot,” and less than eloquently told me to “shut the hell up.”
Without delving into too much of a history lesson, I felt it important to illuminate this statement for Kane and Examiner readers who have been harangued by his steady drumbeat on this issue.
For those who came of age after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Eugene “Bull” Connor ran the police and fire departments in Birmingham, Ala., from 1957 through 1963.
He used high-pressure water jets and police dogs on peaceful demonstrators and young children during the protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights. His brutality attracted national attention, encouraging Congress to enact civil rights and voting rights laws.
Half a century later, Alabama again is making headlines in a human rights struggle. Of all the copycat state legislation enacted after Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, Alabama’s goes the furthest.
I’ve ignored these columns for several months, and for good reason. After all, since June, the state has been sued by the Episcopal, Methodist and Catholic churches, the Department of Justice and a broad coalition of local and national civil rights groups.
Teachers groups and fair housing advocates have filed briefs opposing the law, the pastor of a church once attended by Bull Connor has joined the opposition to the measure, and the Alabama chapter of the NAACP, an entity that also knows a thing or two about Connor, called it “a modern attempt to legalize racism in Alabama.”
These lawsuits indicate that this backward law has led to an updated version of the coalition of conscience that supported the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Birmingham protests against Connor in 1963.
And for good reason. In addition to several provisions that encourage racial profiling by law enforcement, the law requires that public schools conduct immigration checks on students and their parents, and prohibits offering transportation or rental housing to undocumented immigrants.
This law seeks to frighten undocumented immigrants into leaving the state or going deeper underground, where they will be vulnerable to exploitative employers, unscrupulous landlords and violent criminals. While today’s bigots have found more sophisticated ways to intimidate minority groups, there’s a short distance between Bull Connor and today’s slumlords, sweatshop owners and anti-immigrant demagogues.
As Dr. King wrote in his classic “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “Segregation … ends up relegating persons to the status of things.” So do the Arizona law and copycat measures in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina that seek to harass men, women and children who have come to the United States in search of better lives.
Just as Congress enacted civil rights and voting rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, now is the time to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation that provides a path to citizenship for undocumented workers who are otherwise law-abiding and are willing to pay back taxes and other penalties.
Repressive laws in Alabama and elsewhere recall the sins of Bull Connor. Thankfully, the response by individuals of conscience from every heritage revives the spirit of Dr. King.
Wade Henderson is president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
