http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/293883781

Oral history interview with Connie H. Pitts

Interview with Connie H. Pitts, a Navy veteran and law enforcement officer, concerning his experiences while serving with the Birmingham, Alabama, Police Department during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His youth in a rural segregated community in Alabama; contacts with African-American servicemen while a member of the SeaBees during World War II; decision to join the Birmingham Police Department, 1946; lack of proper law enforcement training; his promotion to detective; attitudes of policemen toward the African-American community; abuses by the police department toward the African-American community; attitudes of the African-American community toward the Birmingham Police Department; zoning problems, housing, and bombings in the 1950s; attendance at the FBI Academy, Washington, DC, 1956; school desegregation incidents; comments about Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene ("Bull") Connor; dealings with the Citizens Council of Alabama and other white supremacist groups; sit-ins and demonstrations; freedom riders; tactics used for crowd control; comments about Alabama Governor George Wallace; bombing of the Gaston Motel, May, 1963; comments about Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders.

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