Eugene "Bull" Connor
Eugene "Bull" Connor was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 when civil rights protests led by Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference brought the city to a halt.
Connor used fire hoses and attack dogs to suppress peaceful protestors, many of them children. Americans, who saw this violence on national television, were shocked and disgusted. Unwittingly, Connor helped the civil rights movements. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, Connor's violence served, "to subpoena the conscience of the nation." When everyone saw the terrible treatment that African-Americans received, they felt they must do something. This could not be happening in America to American citizens.