And then those mass movements resulted in… Yup, democratic change! And frankly, the illegal actions were mostly to stir sympathy because, yes, the key making policy changes was having enough people support your side because, you guessed it, that’s how democracy works!

I don’t recall the book’s name but there’s a great account of why the civil rights movement targeted Birmingham in particular and one of the big reasons was they knew the sherrif, Bull Connor, would over-react and over-react violently in a way that would garner sympathy for the movement. (That’s how they got the iconic photo of the Black kid getting bitten by the cop dog.) King might have talked about it in Letters from Birmingham jail?