ESTABLISHMENT OF THE BIRMINGHAM CIVIL RIGHTS NATIONAL MONUMENT. The A.G. Gaston Motel (Gaston Motel), located in Birmingham, Alabama, within walking distance of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park, and other landmarks of the American civil rights movement (movement), served as the headquarters for a civil rights campaign in the spring of 1963. The direct action campaign -- known as 'Project C' for confrontation -- challenged unfair laws designed to limit the freedoms of African Americans and ensure racial inequality. Throughout the campaign, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Reverend Ralph David Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), and other movement leaders rented rooms at the Gaston Motel and held regular strategy sessions there. They also staged marches and held press conferences on the premises. Project C succeeded in focusing the world's attention on racial injustice in America and creating momentum for Federal civil rights legislation that would be enacted in 1964.
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