This painting commemorates the Birmingham Campaign, a series of direct actions, marches, sit-ins, and boycotts organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1963 to protest segregation in the city’s stores. Birmingham’s notoriously racist commissioner of public safety, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, ordered the police and fire departments to unleash attack dogs and fire hoses on the marchers. The resulting violence helped to change public opinion and contributed to President John F. Kennedy’s decision to actively support civil rights legislation.

Jack Levine’s use of white attack dogs, whose leashes are held by unseen figures outside the painting, involves viewers directly in this brutal act of aggression. Arrayed shoulder to shoulder, the five Black protesters embody the statement “We shall not be moved,” from the famous civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”