Birmingham's Civil Rights District

The story of Birmingham, Alabama's, role in the long march to civil rights has been told and retold around the world. With the opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) in November 1992, the city found a place to tell its own story.

BCRI, the centerpiece of the city's Civil Rights District, chronicles the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, including these influential events:

• the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954;
• the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus for her refusal to give up her seat to a white man; and
• the 1963 March on Washinigton

The Institute recounts a time when racial separation was prevalent in Birmingham and throughout the South. A segregated water fountains display in the Barriers Gallery (1920s to 1950s) alludes to this era of double standards — when men of one race could not depend on freedoms that others took for granted.

Other richly detailed exhibits lead visitors through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and on to the human rights struggles of today.

Details
BCRI is located at 520 16th St. N. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $10 for adults; $5 for persons 65 and older; and free for age 17 and under.

Free parking is available, for a limited number of motorhomes, on a lot located at the rear of the facility. Non-metered parking is available on 15th Street North, which runs directly behind the Institute.

Elsewhere in Birmingham's Civil Rights District ...

Famous landmark
The city’s most famous civil rights landmark, the 16th Street Baptist Church, lies across the street from the Civil Rights Institute.

On a Sunday morning in September 1963, four African-American schoolgirls were changing into their choir robes in the basement of the church. A bomb set by Ku Klux Klansmen ripped through that side of the church, killing the girls.

The bombing shocked the city and the world and was a turning point in the status of race relations in this country. (The story of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing is told in filmmaker Spike Lee’s documentary Four Little Girls.)

The 16th Street Baptist Church has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Bethel Baptist
The 16th Street Baptist was the church that drew worldwide attention, but Bethel Baptist Church is credited with shaping the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham.

Civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was pastor of Bethel Baptist Church from 1953 through 1961. The church often served as a gathering place for discussions of civil rights among blacks, gatherings that angered white supremacists. In 1958 Bethel Baptist was bombed. The church was empty at the time.

The bombing cemented Shuttlesworth’s fiery determination to bring Birmingham to the center of the Civil Rights Movement. His high-profile in the Movement incited other acts of violence against him.

On Christmas night in 1956, a bomb was planted under the parsonage where he and his family lived. The blast destroyed the house, blowing up the bed Shuttlesworth occupied. Miraculously, he walked away from the destroyed parsonage unharmed.

Shuttlesworth later endured vicious opposition while trying to integrate schools, buses and businesses. He remained active in the Birmingham struggle even after he moved to Cincinnati in 1961. A statue of Shuttlesworth greets visitors as they enter the BCRI.

Kelly Ingram Park
Kelly Ingram Park, which faces the Institute, served as a congregating area for demonstrations in the early 1960s, including the ones in which police dogs and fire hoses were turned on marchers by Birmingham police.

Images of those attacks haunted Birmingham in the decades that followed, but they were the same images that were instrumental in overturning legal segregation.

Dramatic sculptures all around Kelly Ingram Park vividly depict the events that took place there in the 1960s.

Other attractions
Also nearby in the Civil Rights District is the historic Carver Theater for the Performing Arts, a venue for local jazz artists and comedy acts.

The Carver Theater also houses the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, which honors jazz greats with ties to the state of Alabama. Exhibits showcase the accomplishments of Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Erskine Hawkins, Sun Ra and the music that made them famous.

The Eddie Kendricks Memorial Park, just down the block, honors Birmingham native and Temptations lead singer Eddie Kendricks, who traveled throughout the world but never forgot his Alabama roots.

Sculpted by Alabama artist Ronald Scott McDowell, the Kendricks statue captures for eternity the magic moves of his Motown music. Inlaid in a granite backdrop behind Kendricks, the four other Temptations energize the work with their fine-tuned choreography.

Thriving district
The Fourth Avenue Business District remains active with restaurants, barbershops and bakeries. This cluster of black-owned businesses was the core of African-American social and commercial life in the early 1900s and later when white-owned shops and stores refused to serve black customers.

Many minority-owned businesses still operate in the District today, serving a steady stream of customers of all races.
 

More info links:

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
www.bcri.org/index.html

Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau
www.bcvb.org/index.asp