ALABAMA – Montgomery and Birmingham
Today we visited the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, AL and had some great photo opps at Civil Rights sites around Montgomery. We then went to Birmingham where we visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum (www.beri.org).
Do you know that in Birmingham in 1944 there were 42.8 students per African-American teacher and 24.3 students per White teacher?
Do you know that in Birmingham in 1944, African-American teachers made only 60% of the salary that a White teacher made and their class size was much larger (see above)?
Did you know that in 1950, 73% of African-American males worked as laborers and only 33% of White males worked as laborers?
Do you that in the 1960’s nearly 50 unsolved racially directed bombings led to the unofficial name of Birmingham as “Bombingham” instead of “Birmingham?”
Do you know that in Birmingham in 1963, 1,000 children marched from 16th Street Baptist Church protesting segregation and were arrested and jailed?
Do you know that children who were protesting were sprayed with fire hoses, strong enough to take bark off a tree and surely strong enough to take skin off a human body?
Do you know that on September 15, 1963, a bomb was planted by the KKK and exploded near the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killing four little African- American girls who were in the church bathroom after Sunday School?
Do you know that their names were: Addie Mae Collins, age 14, Denise McNair, age 11, Carole Robertson, age 14 and Cynthia Wesley, age 14?
Do you know that the deaths of these little girls coupled with the killing of President Kennedy 2 months later caused such an emotional stir that it helped pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
Do you know…?
That I went to a shop last evening and started talking with the White store clerk. The subject of our “Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights” journey came up. I asked her if she still saw segregation. She told me that she is from a small town not far from Birmingham and that she started dating an African-American man. She said that when she told this African-American man that she was from that particular town (“Where the African-American people still live in “The Colony”) he asked her if her father was going to kill him if he found out they were dating.