Alabama is the birthplace of many of the freedoms African Americans experience today. Among the many significant events that occurred there, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. officially earned his stripes as a leader in the state, as he stared “inconvenience” (as communicated by President Kennedy at the time) and waning faith in the face by staging a protest that led to his arrest and ultimately the penning of the famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.”
“Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never,'” he wrote in the letter that was composed in the margins of a New York Times newspaper in 1963.
King’s footprints as well as those of other key figures that helped lead the Civil Rights Movement are firmly implanted in Alabama and have made historic several sites that visitors must see.
Here are five of such landmarks:
1. Edmund Pettus Bridge (Selma) – Bloody Sunday took place on this bridge as civil rights leaders and supporters were beaten while trying to cross in solidarity to gain the justice and equality (voting rights) that blacks deserved in Alabama.
2. Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham)- a museum and research center that depicts the struggles of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
“When i travel the country, I make sure I stop by museums with African American themes just to keep learning. But out of all of them I’ve visited – and I’ve been to just about all of them, this one is “it,” said SC Congressman James Cyburn.
3. 16th Street Baptist Church (Birmingham) – 4 little girls were senselessly murdered and many others hurt at this preeminent church that stands in Birmingham, Al. It was bombed on a Sunday morning just before worship service started. The church now represents the hate that existed in the country at that time as well as the forgiveness that exists today.
4. First Baptist Church (Montgomery) – led by civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott it was the location of mass meetings, it was the site of the formal initiation of John Lewis into the civil rights movement, and it was a refuge for the passengers on the Freedom ride which met with violence at the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Montgomery.
5. Kelly Ingram Park (Birmingham) – in the Birmingham Civil Rights District, this park served as a central staging ground for large-scale demonstrations (led by MLK and Fred Shuttlesworth of SCLC) during the Civil Rights Movement. It was here that Birmingham police and firemen, under orders from Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, confronted demonstrators with arrests, police dogs and firehoses.
