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Sixty years ago this week, Project CC for Confrontationwas in full swing in Birmingham, Alabama.

African American ministers involved in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had invited Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders and groups to come to the predominately working-class Birmingham to organize and lead peaceful demonstrations.

In 1963, Birmingham was arguably Americas most segregated city

In 1963, Birmingham and had no Black police officers, firefighters, bus drivers, bank tellers or even store clerks. Whites Only signs were not only common but legally mandated. Blacks made less than half the income of whites and their unemployment rate was two-and-a-half times higher than their white counterparts.

Bombings, particularly of Black churches and businesses, occurred frequently and were rarely investigated. Only 10% of voting-age Blacks were registered to vote. As had been the case for virtually the entirety of American history, whites took for granted Black subservience and their second-class status reinforced by segregation.

Whites labeled the civil rights protestors as troublemakers who lacked what they considered proper civility and decorum. Other outsiders who came to Birmingham from all areas of the country to join the struggle, were branded and marginalized, relegated as agitators or worse, communists, and un-American who didnt understand our southern way of life or our culture.

Even mildly sympathetic white clergy, considered the protests ill-timed and urged moderation and counseled encouraged quiet conciliation by their fellow Black ministers and followers. As King remarked from his jail cell in Birmingham (hed been arrested for defying an injunction barring the demonstrations), We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

In Birmingham the civil rights organizers used strategies that had proved successful in other communities: Boycotts of businesses, sit-ins at lunch counters, non-violent marches and respectful demonstrations at government buildings. The protests had been going on for months with even school-age children joining the marches; the city and county jails were nearing capacity.

On May 2 alone, the Birmingham police arrested 959 black children, the youngest age 6, the oldest, 18. As the oppressor sought to stifle the movement toward equality, business in downtown Birmingham went stagnant.

By early May, some racial moderates in city government were willing to consider meaningful negotiation and substantive changes.

But, then enter Theophilus Eugene Bull Connor into the fray and his heavy-handed tactics and his ignorance of the impending direction change of American history.

Connor was the long-time Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety overseeing the police and fire departments. He had a well-deserved proudly-earned reputation as a brutal, rock-ribbed, unreformed, full-throated, defender of white supremacist. Hed gained national notoriety in 1961 when he allowed local Ku Klux Klansmen, wielding lead pipes and brass knuckles, to pummel black and white college students who were riding interstate busses through the deep South. Some were part of the Freedom Riders, and after they arrived at the Birmingham bus terminal, Connors Birmingham police looked on passively during the 15-minute bloodbath.

King and the other southern ministers hoped that Connor would, true to his word, utilize massive arrests, brutal tactics, and generally overreact to the peaceful protests occurring in downtown Birmingham.They couldnt have scripted it any better, particularly after northern media had swarmed into town.

When it looked like it couldnt get any worse, all hell broke loose.

As still more demonstrators joined the marches, Connors forces unleashed German Shepherd police dogs on high-school students.

Their crime?

Marching peacefully.

The next several days he had his fire department blast high school students with high-pressure fire hoses.

Their crime?

Peacefully walking one block in downtown Birmingham.

The newsreel footage and photos that resulted are iconic and are now seared now into the American consciousness. The Soviet press had a public relations field day, gleefully reprinting the images in their state-sponsored newspaper, Pravda.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy administration looked on, understandably aghast; the protests, but particularly the overreaction by Connors thugs, were forcing the moderate Kennedys (younger brother Robert at the time was JFKs Attorney General) to take a much more progressive and active stand on civil rights than they had previously or had wanted to.

In early June, JFK addressed the nation, announcing that he planned to introduce sweeping legislation to the Congress later in the year, legislation that would eventually become the landmark Civil Rights Act.

In late summer, King gave his monumental I Have a Dream Speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a speech watched (and rewatched) by millions. As Kennedy remarked to an aide, The Civil Rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor. Hes helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.

Which brings us to current Montana politics and the Republican expulsion of Zooey Zephyr last week after her indecorous speech and the subsequent peaceful protests in the House gallery. The image of Zephyr holding one hand on her heart and a silenced microphone in the other on the floor of the Montana House of Representative may or may not become as iconic as the photos Bull Connors photo of high-pressure water hoses blasting peaceful protestors in downtown Birmingham. But history will claim it as an inflection point for the LGBTQ movement.

Twenty years from now (or less), when that her dramatic r monumental photograph appears in American history textbooks, most students will look at it with a sense of, Wow, I really cant believe they would have done that. What were they thinking? Im glad were way beyond that now.

The LGBTQ movement should thank God for the Montana Speaker of the House, Matt Reiger and the lockstep Montana GOP he commands.

Their actions will do ve done more for LGBTQ rights in this country than they could have ever could have imagined.

Keith Edgerton is a professor of history at Montana State University-Billings

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Thank you, Montana Republicans, for altering the course of history ... - Daily Montanan