In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a coalition of civil rights groups in a nonviolent campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, which was known as the most segregated city in the United States. The police brutality that followed, which was captured on television and showed young African Americans being attacked by dogs and water hoses, sparked national outrage and led to a push for unprecedented civil rights legislation. It was during this campaign that King wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which is now required reading in universities around the world.