Bull Connor

Connor ordered fire hoses and police attack dogs to be used against peaceful Black demonstrators, including children, during the spring 1963 protests. King cites these acts to make his philosophical arguments about unjust laws concrete and undeniable, transforming abstract definitions borrowed from Augustine and Aquinas into documented, visible cruelty that no reader could dismiss as theoretical.

Connor has no dialogue in the letter—King never quotes him or addresses him directly. He exists entirely through his actions: the fire hoses, the dogs, and his role as Birmingham's Commissioner of Public Safety. King uses Connor as evidence rather than as a voice, allowing his documented conduct to speak against him more powerfully than any quoted statement could.

King uses Connor to expose a moral contradiction in the clergymen's position: they praised Birmingham's 'law and order' while urging patience, yet Connor is precisely who enforces that order—with fire hoses and attack dogs. By linking the two, King implies the clergymen cannot celebrate the city's legal structure without taking responsibility for the brutality used to maintain it.

King argues that Connor's overreach produces 'creative tension'—a confrontation so stark and visible that complacent white moderates can no longer ignore injustice. Rather than treating Connor's violence as a reason to stop marching, King reframes it as proof that nonviolent direct action works: Connor's brutality publicizes oppression more effectively than years of quiet petitions ever did.

King groups Connor with Governor George Wallace, presenting him as representative of an entire apparatus of racial oppression at every level of Alabama government—not a lone eccentric. King also filters Connor through Augustine's and Aquinas's natural-law frameworks, situating his cruelty within a long philosophical tradition of identifying illegitimate authority, which underscores that Connor embodies systemic, institutionalized evil.

King suggests Connor functions as an unintentional catalyst for civil rights progress. His excessive state violence made Southern segregation visible to the entire nation and world, advancing the cause more than years of respectful negotiation. The irony King traces is that a man dedicated to crushing the movement inadvertently accelerated it by stripping away any illusion that 'law and order' in Birmingham was just or humane.

King never vilifies Connor in personal terms and does not call for revenge or punishment. Instead, he uses Connor's documented actions strategically and philosophically—as proof that unjust laws degrade human personality, as Augustine defined them. This restraint reflects King's awareness that his intended audience is the white moderate and the watching nation; moral authority required demonstrating discipline and redemptive suffering, not matching Connor's hatred.

King draws a parallel between Socratic questioning—which created productive discomfort in Athens to awaken moral consciousness—and the act of marching into Connor's Birmingham. Connor becomes the unwilling foil in a Socratic drama: just as Athenian complacency needed Socrates' provocation to be exposed, American moral complacency needed the spectacle of Connor's fire hoses to be confronted. Connor generates the discomfort that, King argues, leads to genuine justice.