 The images also had a profound effect in Birmingham . Despite decades of disagreements , when the photos were released , " the black community was instantaneously consolidated behind King " , according to David Vann , who would later serve as mayor of Birmingham . Horrified at what the Birmingham police were doing to protect segregation , New York Senator Jacob K. Javits declared , " the country won 't tolerate it " , and pressed Congress to pass a civil rights bill . Similar reactions were reported by Kentucky Senator Sherman Cooper , and Oregon Senator Wayne Morse , who compared Birmingham to South Africa under apartheid . A New York Times editorial called the behavior of the Birmingham police " a national disgrace . " The Washington Post editorialized , " The spectacle in Birmingham ... must excite the sympathy of the rest of the country for the decent , just , and reasonable citizens of the community , who have so recently demonstrated at the polls their lack of support for the very policies that have produced the Birmingham riots . The authorities who tried , by these brutal means , to stop the freedom marchers do not speak or act in the name of the enlightened people of the city . " President Kennedy sent Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall to Birmingham to help negotiate a truce . Marshall faced a stalemate when merchants and protest organizers refused to budge . 
