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…)
Trailblazer
My maiden name is Diane Tucker and in 1963, in the spring of eighth grade, I was at Our Lady of Fatima Elementary School. I was so excited that I was rated as the number one student in the eighth grade with the highest grade average. I was a straight A student. I was a member of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church. With all the racial unrest in Birmingham at the time, my church, my community and my family grounded me and made me feel safe. Then Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed and four young Black girls were killed, one of whom I knew. I felt like the world was ending. For the first time in my life, I was scared. (more…)
September 15, 1963: The Day our Driver Changed Course
Alert: This essay contains a racial slur used by some white people at that time to demean Black children as a group.
Our family lived on a wooded hilltop in the white suburb of Mountain Brook, protected from sleepless nights of bombings and police oppression plaguing Black families in the Magic City. My few glimpses of struggles for justice downtown were through safety glass windows of a 1959 Chevrolet station wagon that sported jet fins, a V-8 engine, and could haul up to a dozen kids.
On Mother’s Day 1961 when I was age twelve, Mama drove my siblings and me downtown to the Trailways station to pick up our cousin from Mississippi. There was no place to park out front. A crowd milled around, spilling out of the station. Mama noted how strange there were no officers or police cars anywhere. She double-parked. Leaving the engine running, she instructed my older brother, “Go in, find Stevie, grab his bags and bring him back immediately.” “Robert, climb in the back and open the tailgate window.” While my brother was inside, a half dozen white men toting tire irons, bats, and chains rushed toward the rear of the station, almost tripping over each other as if late for an event. Finally, my brother and Stevie emerged from the front of the station. I took Stevie’s suitcase, and the two of them piled in the middle seat. Mama scratched off before I could close the tailgate window.
The front page of the next day’s newspaper featured a circle of white men taking turns beating an unidentifiable victim on the floor. The article reported the Freedom Riders’ bus arrived at the station shortly after we had left. On the radio, Bull Connor told reporters he gave police officers the day off so they could visit their mothers on Mother’s Day.
In early May 1963, we picked up Stevie at the bus station with no problems. When Mama turned south toward home on a one-way street, police cars and firetrucks packed the avenue to our right. I looked through a gap in the blockade and hollered, “Mama, they’re shooting people down with firehoses.” (more…)
I saw the Blacks in Alabama standing for something
In 1963 I was 10 years old and believed life in the South was unfair to blacks. I grew up in the West Princeton-Rising neighborhood and was number 8 of 11 children. My father worked for United States Steel (USS) and my mother was a homemaker.
Lomb Avenue divided West Princeton-Rising from West End, which was the white neighborhood. We had to cross that Ave when doing neighborhood shopping. The white kids would name call and throw rocks at us.
Two of my sisters and one brother, attended A. H. Parker high school during the year of 1963. They were given very stern instructions, that morning of the Children’s Crusade, not to leave school for any reason. My brother evidently didn’t hear those instructions because he did participate. Thankfully for him he was not arrested. That evening we all watched the evening news and my siblings were pointing out some of their classmates.
I saw then that the blacks in Alabama were standing for something. It made me see that equality could be made possible for blacks but only if they fought for it.
Veronica Jackson wrote this story expressly for Kids in Birmingham 1963 in December 2020.
My friend Fate nor I would never be the same
In 1963 I was 13 years old and my family owned a grocery store (Ted’s Big Apple) and home approximately 3 blocks from the 16th Street Baptist Church (6th Ave). The morning the church was bombed I was outside playing in front of my family’s store on 15th Street and 8th Avenue. The blast shook the entire community of Fountain Heights and beyond. The blast and the ensuing emergency vehicles caused me to run the 2-3 blocks towards the sound of the blast. Along the way I stopped by my friend’s house (Fate Morris) and he and I ran to the 16th Street Baptist Church. (more…)