Day 1

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 16^th 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 16^th 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 16^th 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!