Theophilus Eugene Connor
Former Alabama State RepresentativeWikipedia
32
MENTIONS
21
EPISODES
19
PODCASTS
Search complete. 32 mentions across 21 episodes found for "Theophilus Eugene Connor".
Oct 1, 2026
speaker_0SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And they want to scare white people to win an election because that is a time honored tradition in the Republican Party.
speaker_0SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
From Bull Connor to George Wallace to David Duke to Donald Trump.
Michael BerryHOST
check the political party affiliation of the individuals he just mentioned.
Michael BerryHOST
Those aren't Republicans.
Christopher ScaliaHOST
Yeah
Michael AuslinGUEST
... because it had to make the point, right? Or, of course, you have Bull Connor and what's going on in Birmingham and these other places, all of these contingencies that bring it onto the TV screens of Americans, which is another interesting question, by the way, the same way that Vietnam...
Michael AuslinGUEST
You know, we could fight wars for a long time when they weren't televised.
Christopher ScaliaHOST
Mm-hmm.
Christopher ScaliaHOST
Yeah
Michael AuslinGUEST
... because it had to make the point, right? Or of course, you have Bull Connor and what's going on in Birmingham and these other places, all of these contingencies that bring it onto the TV screens of Americans, which is another interesting question, by the way, the same way that Vietnam.
Michael AuslinGUEST
You know, we could fight wars for a long time when they weren't televised.
Christopher ScaliaHOST
Mm-hmm.
James TalaricoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
They want to make political hay out of hashtags that they see on Twitter.
James TalaricoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And they want to scare white people to win an election because that is a time-honored tradition in the Republican Party, from Bull Connor to George Wallace to David Duke to Donald Trump.
Michael BerryHOST
check the political party affiliation of the individuals he just mentioned.
Michael BerryHOST
Those aren't Republicans.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
And the Birmingham campaign was sort of hatched as a plan to do that.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
The major idea was that the Birmingham campaign would bring the movement into direct contact with this guy named Bull Connor, the police commissioner down in Birmingham, who is a hardened segregationist, had devoted much of his life to protecting segregation and promoting white supremacy through politics and through law enforcement.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
And so King and his allies knew that if they went down to Birmingham and challenged the segregation there, that Bull Connor would react He would overreact.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
He would react with violence.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
And so they really wanted to contrast their nonviolent direct action approach with what they knew would be the violence of Bull Connor.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
And so they hatched this plan to go down there, but they end up delaying the campaign a little bit because of politics.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
Bull Connor announced he was running for mayor of Birmingham.
Nicholas BuccolaGUEST
And the last thing the movement wanted to do was go down to Birmingham, engage in a direct action campaign that Conor would then be able to use for his own political benefit.
Rob McCoyHOST
They have... you know, rejected their own humanity in order to do these violent things.
Rob McCoyHOST
And that was, you know, that was one of King's foundations of nonviolence was that in, well, you know, as they're doing, as Bull Connor is opening up the hoses, he will be, he will see the he will be changed by the suffering of somebody else.
Rob McCoyHOST
And, you know, you can argue whether how much that works and, uh, you know, how effective it is in different ways.
Rob McCoyHOST
But we know that, um, as far as the civil rights movement was concerned, when people saw it, that's when, that's when things started to change.
John GreenHOST
So the Civil Rights Movement reached its greatest national prominence in 1963, when Martin Luther King came to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, where there had been more than 50 racially motivated bombings since World War II.
John GreenHOST
Television brought the reality of the Jim Crow South into people's homes, as images of Bull Connor's police dogs and water cannons being turned on peaceful marchers, many of them children, horrified viewers and eventually led Kennedy to endorse the movement's goals.
John GreenHOST
Probably should mention that John F. Kennedy was President of the United States at the time, having been elected in 1960.
John GreenHOST
He was assassinated in 1963, leading to Lyndon Johnson.
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
It really was part of the intention of 9-1-1 from the outset.
Sasha LilleyHOST
So speaking of deeply entrenched racism, how does Alabama's notorious segregationist Bull Connor play a role in the emergence of the emergency hotline? Yeah, this
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
was a quite surprising story, but surprising and not surprising.
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
For years, I had known that 911, the very first phone call, had come in in Haleyville, Alabama in February of 1968.
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
It could result in increases in arrests.
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
But interestingly enough, this design was very much of interest to stakeholders in Alabama.
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
Bull Connor, who is a figure who many of us know the name of and we think of as the individual who sent police dogs on children who were protesting.
Rebecca NeusteterGUEST
The segregation in schools and the lack of rights that folks had who were people of color in Alabama.
Bob BazankoGUEST
Correct.
Bob BazankoGUEST
And I think that's really important because had it been other than Bull Connor would have been out there, you know, with the German champions every day, there would have never been any condemnation or denunciation of him.
Bob BazankoGUEST
Right.
Bob BazankoGUEST
So at that point, you know, the left and this is during the Cold War.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
They would throw us in the paddy wagons and we'd be stacked in there sometimes like sardines in a can.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
They throw us in and Bull Connor would say, take them off.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
But and then they did.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
But we would still go on in the paddy wagon singing.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
And finally, we were thrown in jail.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
You would see the jailers looking through the windows, being moved by our words and being moved by our prayers and our songs.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
And so we had a spiritual power there within those jail cells that Bull Connor and the segregationists couldn't adjust to.
Austin Julio BroadGUEST
And so through prayer and perseverance, we were able to turn Bull Connor into a steer and win our struggle in Birmingham.
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