Civil Rights Trip: Photo and Video Footage

This video features photos and video footage from our civil rights trip. We dedicate this blog and this video to all of the Foot Soldiers whose names are often forgotten, but played a huge role by participating in the Civil Rights Movement.

Montgomery: Dexter Church Parsonage and Home to Dr. King

Image of Dr. King’s home in Montgomery.

This was perhaps the best tour we had on the trip. Shirley Cherry was our tour guide for seeing the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church parsonage. She was a retired schoolteacher who had more energy and information than all of us combined.  Her knowledge of the movement was often firsthand and if not firsthand, than a very close secondhand. She told us about meeting the Mr. Peters, the man who arrested Rosa Parks. He actually came to the house and got a tour.

Before Dr. King came to Dexter, the church had been pastored by Rev. Vernon John. It was he who really got the community ready to bring in someone like Dr. King. He often preached on the future blacks needed to strive for and what was in their way to get there. Some say that Vernon John was to Dr. King like John the Baptist was to Jesus.-class black church. At the time churches were one of the only institutions that blacks could own and they were often owned by upper-class blacks. Dexter Church owned the house (309 Jackson Street) that Dr. King lived in while he pastored the church. The house is located on Centennial Hill, a middle class black neighborhood. Down the street in the biggest house on the block lived Vera Harris, who helped to house many of the freedom riders.

Before going into the King’s old house we saw the place where a bomb had left a hole in the porch. Upon entering the house it was like going back in time. Many of the things in the house were original and it was very easy, with the help of Shirley to envision everything that took place in the house. We got to see where the family would eat, sleep, host guests, and many other things. In the dining room there was a keyboard where we reflected on Dr. Kings statement, “There are no gradations in the image of God.  Every man from a treble white to a bass black are significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because everyone is made in the image of God.”

We also spent a long time in the kitchen where Dr. King sat at the kitchen table late one night and contemplated God’s calling for his life. In this moment he found that he need not fear anything of this world and that God had plans for him. I can remember feeling how easy it was to relate to those same fears he expressed and the comfort that God can be in those moments. It was very moving to hear about Dr. King sending home artificial flowers to his wife. For her this was out of the ordinary. Her husband usually sent real flowers, so she called and asked why the change. He answered by saying that he wanted her to have something that would always be there, as if he knew he would soon be killed.

Birmingham: Kelly Ingram Park

Entrance to Kelly Ingram Park

Kelly Ingram Park is named after a white Birmingham firefighter who was the first Navy sailor to die in World War I.  City officials have debated changing the name to honor the Civil Rights leaders of the area, but decided to keep the name because of the events that happened there.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had come down to Birmingham to find a victory because of the unsuccessful demonstrations that he had organized further north.  Dr. King was arrested and in response to a newspaper column, wrote A Letter From Birmingham Jail.  His arrest led to news reporters coming to Birmingham which was a tactic placed by MLK and Shuttlesworth to highlight the upcoming events.  Dr. King decided that involving the children of Birmingham would be the best idea to prevent the adults from losing their jobs or houses.  On May 2^nd, 1963, the children of Birmingham decided to march through Kelly Ingram Park.

At a certain time during the school day, these children left school while the teachers pretended not to notice.  Dorothy Cotton and James Bevel led the children that day throughout the march.  In the words of several Civil Rights experts, Eugene “Bull” Connor “set the movement on fire.”  Bull Connor was a brutal police chief who terrorized the black population of Birmingham.  That day, May 2^nd, Bull Connor sent policemen with aggressive dogs into the marchers and sprayed them with water hoses; both of which are reflected in sculptures throughout the park.  These actions were broadcast on national television; the world saw children and teenagers being attacked by dogs and sprayed by water hoses. Injured children were rushed to the 16^th Street Baptist Church until the black ambulances; the hearses came to pick them up.

The park serves as a reconciliation gesture from the town of Birmingham to those treated horrifically during and before the movement.  The park portrays various events of Birmingham like the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing that took the lives of four little girls.  The statue honoring these girls faces and is diagonal from the church.

Statue of two children getting hit by water hose.

Further on the right side of the park, there is a statue of a policeman holding a protestor by his collar while a dog nips at his legs

The other part of the four pools center

In the center of four pools, a circle repeating the words “Revolution” and “Reconciliation” is etched in the stone

Statue honoring the four little girls who were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church

The last statue has prison bars on one side of the sidewalk and two individuals on the other that align to show them behind bars. Etched below them is the quote, “I ain’t afraid of your jail.”