Birmingham’s Black radio DJs were like little gods in our lives
In this segment of an expansive oral history she gave in October 2025, Ann speaks of the Black radio stations that broadcast some of her father’s sermons and of the celebrity DJs, who were “like little gods in our lives.” Peering from an upstairs window of the parsonage, Ann could see two Black radio stations, including WENN, where renowned DJ Paul “Tall Paul” White would later give a shoutout to Ann’s brother Luke Beard, who had been his classmate at Parker High.
Bull Connor threw our father in jail
In this segment of an expansive oral history she gave in October 2025, Ann Beard Grundy speaks of the time, when she was 4 years old, that Bull Connor threw her father in jail for refusing to cancel a planned meeting of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. Because their mother protected her children from learning where their father was during this absence, it wasn’t until Ann was an adult that she heard from her older brother about what really happened and read about the court case on this incident, Taylor v. City of Birmingham.
A Second Chance to Act
Growing up in Birmingham in the fifties and sixties was idyllic, which is probably very hard to imagine, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown school desegregation decision in 1954, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956 and all of the tumult of the ’60s. But, I was in high school before our church member, James Armstrong, a barber with an independent income that insulated him from white factors, filed his lawsuit to permit his young sons to integrate the Birmingham public schools, in 1963. Their sister was in my homeroom class at the time the courts ordered their admission. However, there were many other events unfolding in our lives and the race issue was not always uppermost in our thoughts. Many times it was the furthest thing from our minds. Life in the black community was full, varied and dynamic.
Although Birmingham was a large city for the South and I’ve always considered myself as having grown up in an urban setting, for we were only a mile from the downtown business district, the atmosphere of our neighborhood was actually quite rural. (more…)
We were saved for a purpose: To tell our story
In March 2025, Floyd Armstrong gave Kids in Birmingham 1963 an oral history interview about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama in “a civil rights family.” As the sons of a barber who was “committed to the struggle,” Floyd and his brother Dwight, as elementary school-age children, marched in the Birmingham Children’s Crusade and were jailed for several days in May 1963. That September, the Armstrong brothers were the first Blacks to integrate an all-white school in the city of Birmingham—Graymont Elementary School. They knew the civil rights leaders personally, including Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the NAACP lawyers who prepared them for the challenges they faced at that school. Just a few days after their historic action, on September 15, 1963, Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and sparking whites to murder two young African American boys. Floyd is certain, he says, that the violence was meant for his family, but that, “We were saved for a purpose: To tell our story.” (more…)
They bombed our home, but we persisted
August 20, 1963, my mother and I went to the movie theater as we always did before I returned to college. Halfway through the film, a neighbor came to tell us that our house had been bombed. My heart was racing. I was filled with anxiety, fear, and anger. As we approached our house, outraged Blacks filled Center Street North. Police tried to control the crowd by firing guns is in the air. Windows had been blown out, drapes shredded, the garage doors destroyed. My dog Tasso had been killed in the bombing. I couldn’t stop crying. I grieved Tasso’s death for a long time. (more…)