Hey all y’all!
Greetings from Birmingham! Wow,
what a day. Our fearless students began
the day a bit sleepy-eyed at 4AM at the ticket counter, and we haven’t stopped
for a minute!
To recap, we lost a boarding pass, lost a tooth (yes, the
Tooth Fairy will be making a visit), found the boarding pass (THANKFULLY), and
received two compliments from passengers on our flight about how well behaved
our group was. (Great job,
parents!)
We arrived in Birmingham at 10:00CT, and met with our
fabulous tour guide Katie and our driver Clarence. From there, our students were slightly aghast
at the idea that they had been awake at this point for 7 hours and were in
desperate need of lunch at 10:00 in the morning! We had our first experience at Chick-Fil-A,
and it received RAVE reviews. Finally,
we were fueled up and ready to start exploring the city history.
Our first stop was at the Civil Rights Institute, which was
a new stop this year. The museum opens
with a video outlining the coal and mining history of Birmingham, the end of
the Civil War and the onset of the Jim Crow Laws. The students were then allowed to move about
the museum, learning how the turmoil eventually would lead to the city’s
nickname of “Bombingham” and how individuals like Fred Shuttlesworth would come
to be the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the city.
From there, we walked across the street to the 16th
Street Baptist Church. It remains an
active congregation today with over 400 active members. We learned that because of its close
proximity, just three blocks to City Hall, the church became the rallying point
for many marches and speeches. We also
learned of the horrific September 15, 1963 bombing that took the lives of four
young girls, carried out by the local KKK.
Our students were able to engage in a Q&A with our speaker, Mr.
Washington, and were moved by his passion and his knowledge, as he was 18 years
old during the height of the movement.
After the 16th Street Baptist, we met with Pastor
Shannon who spoke to our group at the First Presbyterian Church. As Pastor Shannon recalled, the church was
not the “nose, but the tail of the dog” in the Civil Rights Movement. We learned of the former pastor of the
church, Ed Rammage, who after reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a
Birmingham Jail” was moved to desegregate the congregation but was forced out
nearly a year later by angry parishioners.
Today, the church continues the work of mission by Pastor Rammage
through various works of community service. On our ride from First
Presbyterian, Taylor and Julia read to the group a section of MLK’s Letter and
reflected on the idea that “justice delayed… is justice denied.”
At around 3:30PM, we decided to decompress a bit and headed
to the Southern Museum of Flight where we met with Coast Guard Brian. He really had our students engaged with
learning about the history of aviation from the turn of the century to present-day
planes. Marcus, Kim, Tteja, and Olivia B.
even had a chance to get in the cockpit of some aircraft and demonstrate how
the controls worked! It was a great
exposure for our trip on Thursday to Tuskegee.
We finally closed out the day back at Kelly Ingram
Park. We walked in quiet groups taking
in the history and the sacred nature of the place. The monuments conveyed a true sense of what
had transpired, beginning with the newest statue of the four girls from 16th
Street Baptist, the MLK Jr. statue, the monument attributed to the children
jailed from street protests, the police dog attacks and water hoses used
against the demonstrators and the monument dedicated to the religious leaders
who helped to spur on the nonviolent protest.
Our final reflection was centered around the idea that while the city
has a marked past, we choose to focus on the strength and resiliency of the
human spirit as evidenced in the various individuals who chose to take a stand
and make a change in their world.
Now, we head to Selma to get ready to take on the day
tomorrow!
Goodnight, Wellesley!
