Frank Dukes grew up in Fairfield, Alabama, a western suburb of Birmingham, in the 1930s and 1940s. Dukes attended segregated public schools, including the all-black Fairfield Industrial High School. He went on to fight in the Korean War and, like many black veterans, struggled to reconcile his duty to fight for a country that denied him civil rights when he returned home. Dukes was 24 years old in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional. But in Birmingham, where segregation was often enforced with violence, the promise of equality was still a long way off.

In 1959, supported by the GI Bill, Dukes enrolled at Miles College, a predominantly black college on the outskirts of Birmingham. By then, the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum. In Birmingham, mass meetings and demonstrations had mobilized the black community, but they also activated white resistance. In 1961, civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth won a lawsuit to desegregate the city's 67 public parks. Police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor retaliated by closing the city's parks.

In 1962, as part of a school project, Dukes conducted research using information from the Chamber of Commerce to track the buying power of Birmingham's black population. At the time, African Americans made up 40 percent of the population, and in an average week, they spent $4 million in downtown stores. However, many stores refused to hire African Americans or serve them at their lunch counters. Signs in stores directed them to use separate "colored" water fountains and restrooms.

Inspired by student protests in other cities and supported by Miles College president Lucius Pitts, Dukes and fellow students organized a selective buying campaign, targeting restaurants and stores in downtown Birmingham that discriminated against African Americans. Initially business owners didn't take the students seriously.

Hundreds of African Americans signed a petition demanding equal treatment and fair hiring practices, and the students presented it to the city commissioners. Connor responded with racial epithets and suggested that Dukes move to Detroit, Chicago, or some other northern city. Connor represented the attitude that African Americans were out of line if they questioned segregation or racial inequalities.

The students met with black women and asked them to boycott the stores until the demands were met. In addition to boycotting, black women used their networks to prepare and distribute leaflets, provide transportation to demonstrations, and raise bail money for demonstrators who got arrested. The entire black community participated in the boycott, using their buying power to leverage for equal rights. Because stores operated on a 12 to 15 percent profit margin, and black dollars made up 25 percent of the gross revenue, the boycott created an economic crisis and forced white business owners to listen to the students' demands.

The boycott, which lasted for several weeks, resulted in the removal of "colored" signs in stores and restaurants, as well as the unification of the black community. Along with other activities of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, the boycott set the stage for the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Birmingham campaign, and ultimately led to the desegregation of Birmingham.