In May 1963, I was 14 years old and preparing to graduate from the 8th grade at St. Paul’s School in downtown Birmingham. Most of our class would go on to attend John Carroll Catholic High School in the fall of 1963.
The first memory that comes back to me is that May 1963, was one of the warmest months for attending school in Birmingham that I can remember. The temperature reached 90 degrees for most of that month. St. Paul’s had an old school building dating from the 1920s and it was not air conditioned. So the warmth and discomfort in our classroom reflected the heated emotion of the demonstrations downtown.
The next thing I recall is that we were physically close to the demonstration activities but did not actually see them.