Location


Host Site – Birmingham, AL

The meteoric rise of Birmingham from the place where two railroad lines intersected to a place that forever changed the social, cultural, political, economic, and judicial landscape of the United States of America, and inspired freedom struggles around the world is nothing short of phenomenal.

Magic City

The original “Magic City” sign was erected in 1926 and stood outside the train station. Photo courtesy of al.com.

In 1871, the city of Birmingham rose out of the center of a corn field in Jones Valley to become the industrial capital of the State of Alabama. The mild weather, the valleys and mountains of potential wealth waiting to be harvested, the flora and fauna, broad avenues, and the bee hives of cultural and social activities of this “New South,” city welcomed migrants from across the nation, immigrants from Northern and Southern Europe, farmers, as well as newly freed slaves from across the “Deep South.”

The surrounding red ore fields, the mountains of black coal attracted them all. They all saw an opportunity to make a living in Birmingham and improve their overall quality of life. As the iron and steel industries continued to catapult forward, so did the amazing growth of Birmingham. The young city sprang up, thrived, and grew so quickly that many observers said it happened “just like magic.” Soon, the nickname “The Magic City” was applied to Birmingham.

Rapid growth brought with it a plethora of social, economic, cultural, and political baggage that would shape and define Birmingham’s role in U.S. history for the next 100-plus years.

Birmingham was built by land barons at a time when railroads literally ran the country. Named after England’s industrial giant, the new town became a commercial hub, with railroads crisscrossing throughout the city.

Nearly wiped out by cholera and then by an economic depression in the late 1870s, the little boomtown found its resurgence in a natural abundance of coal, iron ore and limestone, all the ingredients necessary to make steel. Then, the steel making industry took off in a big way and so did Birmingham!

Throughout the Great Depression, Birmingham used “Yankee” capital and an infusion of labor from European immigrants, planting the beginnings of the city’s strongly diverse ethnic character.

The Big Three: Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy Photo Cred: npr.org

The Big Three: Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Photo courtesy of npr.org

The Civil Rights Years                            

After a shaky post World War II recovery, Birmingham entered the decade of the 1950s with pots of frustrations brewing and boiling over in communities all over the city.

Returning veterans who had fought for freedom in Europe sought those same freedoms for themselves and their families. Denied equal access and justice in the courts, they sought it in the streets in organized protest marches, sit-ins, pray-ins, and by applying economic pressure in the form of selective buying campaigns.

Leaders in the African American community, like Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth and the pastors of the sixty churches that supported him, followed the example of other frustrated people across the state of Alabama and around the United States and launched new strategies in an ever-growing effort to obtain “first-class” citizenship.

“It Began at Bethel”

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The Historic Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL

The recognized leaders of the modern Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham were Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, the congregation of the Historic Bethel Baptist Church, and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.

During the height of the “Movement” the Bethel parsonage and church survived three bombings. Most cities had freedom struggles that focused on one area of injustice, the bus. What was different in Birmingham was the fact that Rev. Shuttlesworth attacked segregation at all levels. He sought justice in all its forms including access to public schools, public libraries, job opportunities, the right to vote, the right to seek public office, drink from water fountains, access to public restrooms, the right to be served meals in restaurants, the right to be treated fairly and justly in the courts, as well as the right to sit in any open seat on city buses.

The 1960s brought events that would forever change the “magic” of the city. This was the historic era of police dogs and fire hoses turned on civil rights demonstrators, and the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where four young girls were killed as they prepared to participate in Youth Day services. The city’s national reputation was near ruins. Nonetheless, it was the occurrences in Birmingham that played the pivotal role in the success of America’s modern Civil Rights Movement.  In 1963, Rev. Shuttlesworth was successful in convincing Rev. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to come to Birmingham and join him in the freedom struggles taking place in Birmingham. He knew that the destruction of segregation in Birmingham would have a national impact.

May 1963, Children's Marchers pushed back by fire hoses. Photo courtesy of The Birmingham News

May 1963, Children’s Marchers pushed back by fire hoses. Photo courtesy of The Birmingham News

The opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 1993 did more to heal the city from within and in the eyes of the nation than any other single event. In 2017, President Obama established the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. The city had already established an entire district devoted to Birmingham’s historic struggle for civil rights and common decency for the African American citizens of Alabama and the entire country.

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute founders set out to “focus on what happened in the past, to portray it realistically and interestingly, and to understand it in relationship to the present and future developments of human relations in Birmingham, the United States, and the world.

 
 

BIRMINGHAM, AL: The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is a museum and research center that depicts the struggles of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. According to Melissa Snow-Clark, Head of Communication, the Institute is seeing higher numbers this year because it is the 50th anniversary of major civil rights events in Birmingham.

BIRMINGHAM, AL: The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is a museum and research center that depicts the struggles of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

 
 
 

From its inception, the founders recognized the universality of human conflict. After all, Dr. Martin L. King had been deeply influenced by the religious and ethnic conflicts in India, parts of Africa, and Eastern Europe earlier in the twentieth century. In time, these and other nations drew positive lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement.

Given this broad historical context they perceived human rights as a universal striving. The events that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama in the mid-twentieth century provided a relevant case study of “conflict resolution with global application.” (Birmingham Civil Rights Institute)

As participants in this Institute, our quest for meaning and knowledge will take us from Birmingham to Selma and the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge where marchers were attacked by armed deputies for trying to secure the right to vote. Our Selma tour guide will be Joanne Bland, a Selma native and Freedom Fighter since the age of 11. We will also visit Brown Chapel AME Church and Tabernacle Baptist Church to learn about their roles in the struggle for the right to vote.

 

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Leaving Selma, we will retrace the historic route of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march on our way to Montgomery, the birthplace of the Confederacy and the site of the bus boycott inspired by the courage of Rosa Parks.

In Montgomery, participants will visit Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, The Dexter Parsonage, The Rosa Parks Museum, First Baptist “Brick A Day” Church, The Harris Home, the Equal Justice Initiative Memorial and Museum, Frank M. Johnson Courthouse, and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Civil Rights Teacher’s Center.

Dexter Avenue King Memorial

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, Montgomery. 

Finally, participants will visit Tuskegee, home of the first college for African Americans in Alabama. The college, established by Booker T. Washington, is well known for the agricultural revolution inspired by the work of Dr. George Washington Carver. This city is also home of The Tuskegee Airmen. We will tour the refurbished training site that prepared the men to serve in the Army Air Corp. Events in Tuskegee, as they relate to voting, caused the nation to enforce the “one man-one vote” principle as a result of Gomillion v Lightfoot. Our last stop in this landmark city will be the Tuskegee Multicultural Center where we will meet attorney Fred Gray and learn about his work as one of the leading civil rights attorneys in U. S. history.

Return to our complete 2022 Institute Overview