In light of these threats, several business establishments including the University of Alabama at Birmingham and various private owned businesses closed their doors early and a city-wide curfew was set in place. However, Birmingham residents showed no fear. A crowd of protestors gathered outside Linn Park beginning about 3 p.m. and steadily grew as the hours went on. Some were familiar faces from previous protests, but there were a lot of new faces as well. Many of those who attended Thursday’s protest said they did so because of rumors that the KKK was in town.
Luckily, there were no sightings of white robes or even tiki torches in Birmingham that night. However, that same night a motorist driving along an interstate highway in a majority African-American county near the home of historically black Tuskegee University found a cross burning on an overpass. Though this county was not initially targeted with threats, cross burnings have historically been used by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist organizations to rally supporters and terrorize black people in the South.