Reflections on the Civil Rights Movement in “the most segregated city”
Birmingham, Alabama was once known as “the most segregated city in America.” It can be argued that the 1963 demonstrations in Birmingham and the fierce resistance they provoked changed white attitudes towards civil rights and ultimately led to the most comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation in American history.
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which opened in 1992, was built to serve as a monument to–and a resource about–the thousands of people who were dedicated to the philosophy of non-violence and risked their lives in struggles and confrontations all over the South.
It was with a mixture of emotions that I first visited the Institute on Dr. King’s birthday, January 15, 1993. I was born in Birmingham and grew up there during the civil rights era, a white child in Mountain Brook, a nearby all-white suburb. I left many years ago and moved north. But back in 1963, I was a nine-year-old elementary school student, and even though I did not participate in the demonstrations, they have indelibly marked my life.
My first conscious awareness of segregation came when I was about six. (more…)
Why was Marti so alone?
Why was Marti so alone? Why did I and approximately 1,000 other students fail to join the righteous social revolution that swept Birmingham and America in May of 1963? Speaking for myself, the reason was cowardice. I was among scores, indeed, hundreds of students who thought George Wallace was a buffoon and the violent attacks on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his demonstrators were both unchristian and unconstitutional. More than any decision of my college years, I regret my obedient decision to keep my mouth shut and to stay on campus, as ordered. But I know that I cannot blame my failure on the college administrators who threatened us with expulsion. Most students realized instantly that the college was copping out on its classroom ideals, but it was entirely our own fault that we did not defy our deans in the cause of justice.
Why was I so fearful? (more…)
“A Love That Forgives”
In June 1962, my family moved to Birmingham, Alabama. My father was called to pastor the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. As a 12-year-old, I felt excited from moving from my birthplace, Richmond, Virginia. to a new city and the opportunity to meet new friends and experience life in a new city. Little did I know that the move to Birmingham would literally change our lives forever.
My father got involved immediately upon our move with the Alabama Christian Human Rights Movement and was asked by their leadership if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., could use the church as a place for civil rights meetings, which I did not realize until many years later. (more…)
I became a stereotype
In 1963, I was a student and would-be journalist at Howard College (now Samford University), one of Birmingham’s whites-only institutions intent on ignoring and resisting the civil rights revolution outside their gates. All that effort to shield us, and restrict us, and yet my memories of college years nonetheless are memories of Birmingham and civil rights.
I arrived at Howard with only a rudimentary sense of racial fairness. (more…)
Strength to pursue our ideals
In 1963, I was a senior at Shades Valley High School in Birmingham, Alabama. That was the year, a bright, intensely idealistic, not very savvy girl learned to retreat.
Put me in context. My parents were immigrants who left Europe with my brother during World War II to escape persecution because their ethnic background was Jewish. I was born in New York, and after years there and in Boston, my parents moved to Birmingham in 1953. I was seven.
My father felt he had behaved in less than courageous fashion in Europe on occasion, and he decided he would not hide his progressive views in Birmingham. He helped start the Alabama Council on Human Relations so that blacks and whites could meet together and communicate, a simple enough proposition which at the time was illegal according to Birmingham city ordinances. (more…)