Beginning in the 1940s, however, Connor had turned on Hoover, concerned with the rise in lynching investigations and the enforcement of civil rights. From that point on, he had refused to enroll Birmingham police officers at the FBI Academy, shipping them off instead to a Louisville, Kentucky, training school that specialized in “Southern” police techniques. By the late 1950s, with civil rights conflicts in full bloom, he had taken to openly denouncing the FBI as a tool of Northern liberals.
