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A tip for our Birmingham Uber driver

by Another Slice

A short Uber ride in Birmingham provided both the means to the National Civil Rights Monument and the meaning such places exist.

“Do you know where we could take a civil rights walking tour?” my mom asked William, our driver.

“You’d have to go to Montgomery for that,” he said while he zipped us along to Kelly Ingram Park, as I requested through the app.

My mom, who is regularly game for my adventures but generally distrustful of my plans to get there, shot me a look.

I had done my research for this one, though.

“We’re fine,” I told her, though I wondered why our friendly driver had no idea there was a civil rights walking tour right in his downtown.

We approached the park, which was empty at that early hour, and my mom said, “Is there a Civil Rights Museum near here?”

“I really don’t know,” William said as he parked right across the street from it.

“Well, you got us here,” I told him. “That’s the Civil Rights Institute right there.”

“I guess I should know these things,” he said.

I guess so.

William told us he grew up in Birmingham, which made it extra puzzling that he had no idea about the flashpoints for the civil rights movement right there in his city.

Kitty corner from our drop off spot stood the 16th Street Baptist Church, where members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb that killed four young girls and injured more than 20 other people in 1963.

Though that bombing ignited national outrage, its perpetrators, identified by the FBI as early as 1965, were not convicted for decades. Robert Chambliss was sentenced to life in prison in 1997 and Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2020, 57 years after those little girls died. Herman Frank Cash died in 1994 without being indicted at all.

As we made our way through the walking tour of Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, with its nine-stop narration, we learned all about how Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor unleashed attack dogs and fire hoses on child protestors, arresting nearly 1,000 the first day. Those firehoses were so powerful that they blasted the bark off trees, and they fired them at children as young as six-years old. Eventually the police detained more than 3,000 protestors during a campaign that lasted from May 2 to May 10 and culminated in the release of all the detainees, and significant movement toward the desegregation of Alabama.

There is horror in history, but there is also hope.

As I stood across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church, I noticed a blue metal newspaper box containing the current issue of the Birmingham Times. “Girl Power,” the cover read with a feature story on a nine-year old artist and cancer survivor named Milana “LaLa” Price. As I read about LaLa, it struck me that she received treatment in a hospital that would have been denied to her had the Birmingham Civil Rights Protest failed. She attended schools, visited the public library and created publicly displayed art, all of which would have been denied to her prior to the protests 60 years ago.

So, along with the tip I gave William for delivering us to our destination smoothly and on time, I offer this one:

Treat yourself to a stroll through the Civil Rights Institute, and to the audio tour of the Civil Rights National Monument.

Learn about some of your city’s genuine heroes and the battle they fought for basic rights.

Birmingham is a cool city that has come a long way. But, you can’t appreciate progress if you close your eyes to what got you there.

Kelly Ingram Park, a place of revolution and reconciliation, was the epicenter for the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement and the cornerstone of the four-block Civil Rights Monument located there.
You can take an audio tour of the park, which features nine stations that detail the history of the movement in Alabama. This statue honors the commitment of both local and national clergy members who came to aid in the cause.
One of those clergymen was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote Letters from Birmingham Jail during his incarceration there in 1963.
Protest leaders met, stayed at and, on May 10, announced a hard-fought truce from the A.G. Gaston Motel. The hotel, located a block from Kelly Ingram Park, was bombed the next day.
Thousands of Birmingham students joined the protests, where they faced water cannons, attack dogs and arrests.
The attack dog exhibit is chilling.
Addie May Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were killed when a bomb went off as they were putting their choir robes on in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
A monument to the four girls killed in the bombing and two boys shot to death later that day marks one of the entrances to Kelly Ingram Park.
I saw this newspaper headline as I stood across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church. There is hope in history, and a beautiful future for artist and cancer survivor LaLa Price.
May peace prevail on earth.

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