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But the civil rights movement rolled on. i think it's accurate we had survived birmingham gave us a comfort level that we had not previously had before and it being in washington ed venue is a lot different from say being in a birmingham laws shreveport louisiana or selma alabama oh even in south georgia in all binney but being washington d.c. the nation's capital we were comfortable that nothing would take place we had been . in jail and savannah and birmingham and. we have thousands of young people facing dogs on fire hoses and being jailed. in a very all a nonviolent way. and we thought

Hoses and dogs. >> dr. king realized that if you have embers and you have gasoline, all you need to do is get a spark and things will burn. >> we had instructed people. you don't run from dogs. you back away from them. you continue to look at them. >> i was 16 and i was stupefied by those images. i see these 6-year-old kids marching into dogs and fire hoses singing freedom songs. and when they see the dogs and fire hoses, they don't run. >> they would pin us to the light poles to keep us from

Intellectual discussion can't even approach. >> the constant pressure of these stories, the pictures of the police dogs and the fire hoses and the kids being arrested, those were all powerful firecrackers, if you will, on policy in washington. you start to see the country as a whole saying, "this is intolerable. this has got to stop." and that puts the pressure on. >> reporter: by now the mainstream press was covering all the horrible things in the movement and particularly what had happened in birmingham, and that's an important moment in time because it kind of opens up the door for lyndon j...

>> the constant pressure of these stories, the pictures of the police dogs and the fire hoses and the kids being arrested, those were all powerful firecrackers, if you will, on policy in washington. you start to see the country as a whole saying, "this is intolerable. this has got to stop." and that puts the pressure on. >> reporter: by now the mainstream press was covering all the horrible things in the movement and particularly what had happened in birmingham, and that's an important moment in time because it kind of opens up the door for lyndon johnson. it gets him the space needed to pick ...

Recruits for the so-called nonviolent army was unlimited. >> during the weeks' long birmingham campaign, king himself was arrested. from his cell he composed one of the movement's seminal documents, his "letter from a birmingham jail." he wrote, "we know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. it must be demanded by the oppressed. for years now i have heard the word 'wait.'" it rings in the ear of every negro with a piercing familiarity. we must come to see that justice too long delayed is justice denied. >> more than a thousand schoolchildren, firs...