In 1963 riveting television footage from Birmingham helped change America's course. Images of police dogs mauling black children and water cannons battering civil rights demonstrators touched off a wave of moral outrage that swept across the nation and led to the passage of the most comprehensive laws against racial discrimination since the Civil War.
Last week another dramatic scene took place on Birmingham's streets, but its impact on the nation's troubled race relations is far from clear. With a chain draped symbolically over his shoulders and his wrists bound by steel handcuffs, Mayor Richard Arrington marched with hundreds of supporters from...