Built 1949, 1622 4th Ave. N.
This small, one-story, brick commercial taxi stand building was
constructed after the passage of a 1930 City of Birmingham
ordinance that required separate taxi services for Blacks
and Whites. Rev. George . . . — — Map (db m188185) HM
A key player in the Birmingham civil rights drama was Public Safety
Commissioner Theophilus Eugene Connor. He earned the nickname
"Bull” because of his booming voice as a radio sports announcer. White
voters who supported his politics of racial . . . — — Map (db m187780) HM
On May 2, 1963, more than 1,000 students skipped school and marched on downtown, gathering at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Bull Connor responded by jailing more than 600 children that day. So the next day, another 1,000 students filled the park . . . — — Map (db m73017) HM
After nearly a month, “Project C” seemed on the verge of collapse. The
presence of Dr. King and the SCLC did not rally Black Birmingham behind
the Movement as leaders hoped. The media began to lose interest and
the White community basically . . . — — Map (db m187840) HM
Rev. Bevel and his team worked with popular disc jockeys "Tall Paul”
Dudley White and Shelley “The Playboy" Stewart, whose jive talk on the
radio was actually a secret code that told young foot soldiers when it
was time to "move out.” Despite . . . — — Map (db m187770) HM
When notoriously racist police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor sicced dogs on the "Foot Soldiers" of the movement, civil rights leaders hoped it would shine a national spotlight on their plight, but the country at large remained woefully ignorant. . . . — — Map (db m73398) HM
Built 1925, 1616-1622 4th Ave. N.
Located in the Historic Fourth Avenue Business District next to
the taxi stand and Colored Masonic Temple, this building
housed one of Birmingham's few hotels for Black travelers. It
also housed restaurants . . . — — Map (db m188186) HM
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hoped to gain more national attention for the
Birmingham campaign by planning marches during Holy Week - on Palm
Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But "Bull” Connor created serious problems for King. Connor got a . . . — — Map (db m187834) HM
By the end of April 1963, the national media and local Whites were
losing interest in “Project C.” Fewer Blacks volunteered to be arrested at
downtown stores and lunch counters. So, Rev. James Bevel, a field
Secretary with the SCLC, turned to a . . . — — Map (db m187765) HM
Ministers in 60 Black churches across the city played key roles in the
Birmingham Movement. In the mass meetings, ministers fired up their
working-class members and encouraged commitment to the struggle
against segregation with revival-style . . . — — Map (db m187529) HM
Built in the 1940S, 4th Ave. N. & 19th St. N.
On Mother's Day in 1961, the Freedom Riders, Black and White
members of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), arrived at
Birmingham's Trailways bus station. Though integrated . . . — — Map (db m187994) HM
C28 Side
Built 1921, 1800 5th Ave. N.
Lawyers like Arthur Shores and Thurgood Marshall (shown
with Autherine Lucy, the first Black student to integrate the
University of Alabama) filed numerous lawsuits challenging
racial . . . — — Map (db m188003) HM
Bull Connor ordered the fearless "Child Crusaders" to be blasted with high-pressure fire hoses, and he once again loosed the dogs on the young demonstrators. When the media finally exposed the nation to the cruel scene, President John F. Kennedy . . . — — Map (db m73019) HM
For seven years before the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, Rev. Shuttlesworth
and other leaders of the ACMHR taught masses of Black citizens how
to take direct but non-violent actions to gain first-class American
citizenship. Inspired by faith, these . . . — — Map (db m187787) HM
April 1916
On April 10, 1916, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a
case from Louisville, Kentucky, where it was illegal
to sell homes to Blacks in areas where Whites lived.
The high court's 1917 decision in Buchanan v. Warley
said Louisville's . . . — — Map (db m189158) HM
Memorial Park is the site of the Miracle Sunday Prayer Vigil that occurred on May 5, 1963. to protest the incarceration of Civil Rights demonstrators held in the city jail. Citizens attending a mass meeting at New Pilgrim Baptist Church staged a . . . — — Map (db m295304) HM
On Aug. 18, 1915, Alabama
Equal Suffrage Association
and Birmingham Barons
hosted suffrage day here in
support of women's suffrage — — Map (db m188885) HM
1937
Starting in the 1920s, demand for all housing in
Birmingham increased year after year as the
population grew. Residential areas zoned for
"Negroes,” however, remained the same. By the
1940s, surging Black demand and a postwar . . . — — Map (db m189168) HM
1936
Slum clearance became another facial zoning
Weapon. City health officials described. "Negro
quarters” as the unsanitary source of diseases that
threatened community health: Civic leaders used this
reasoning to win millions in federal . . . — — Map (db m189164) HM
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail" is the most important written document of the Civil Rights Era. His eloquent justification of the movement and . . . — — Map (db m173404) HM
Civil Rights Evangelism for Justice
Rev. Joseph W. Ellwanger, the dynamic pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church from 1958 to 1967, was a member of the Central Committee of Strategists for the Birmingham Civil Rights Campaign of 1963. On March . . . — — Map (db m295302) HM
Racial Terrorism and Convict Leasing. Thousands of black people were the victims of lynching and racial violence in the United States between 1877 and 1950 Lynching was
a form of racial terrorism that went beyond only hanging, . . . — — Map (db m173372) HM
This cemetery is the final resting place of three of the four young girls killed in the September 15, 1963 church bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carol Robertson are buried here. The fourth victim, . . . — — Map (db m61197) HM
Mt. Zion Baptist Church began burying here in the mid-1800s. On June 2, 1970, New Grace Hill Cemetery, Inc., a subsidiary of the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company in Birmingham, purchased this cemetery and officially named it Zion Memorial . . . — — Map (db m35602) HM
Lynching In America.
Thousands of black people were the victims of lynching and racial violence in the United States between 1877 and 1950. The lynching of African Americans during this era was a form of racial terrorism intended to intimidate . . . — — Map (db m101159) HM
Miles College Leaders. Students Active During Civil Rights Era
The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church founded Miles College in
Fairfield in 1898. During the 1960s, President Lucius Pitts
encouraged students, faculty and staff to become . . . — — Map (db m153232) HM
Racial Terrorism and Criminal Justice. Racial terror lynching between 1865 and 1950 claimed the lives of thousands of African Americans and created a legacy of injustice that can still be felt today. After emancipation, white Southerners . . . — — Map (db m167223) HM
African Americans, through enslavement and Jim Crow, constructed campus buildings and worked at the University of North Alabama since its beginnings in 1830, yet they were denied admission as students for 133 years. In 1963, Wendell Wilkie Gunn . . . — — Map (db m156930) HM
Recipient in 1989 of the first Kodak Award for Photojournalism, Charles Moore chronicled such major events as the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's South, political violence in Haiti, and the air war in Vietnam. — — Map (db m219326) HM
Toward the end of the 19th Century, the U.S. government decided that Native Americans should integrate into American culture and give up tribal sovereignty.
The Dawes Allotment Act forced Native Americans to register on what became known as . . . — — Map (db m212215) HM
Dred Scott, whose name is associated with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott Decision of 1857, was born in Virginia between 1795-1809. In 1818 he was in Madison County, Alabama. He came to Florence with the Peter Blow family in 1820. About . . . — — Map (db m35183) HM
A keen observer and researcher of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, Hank Klibanoff won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. — — Map (db m219181) HM
A print journalist from 1928 to 1970, including many years has a newspaper editor,
Louis Eckl was honored by Presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy for his courageous defense of civil rights for all people. — — Map (db m285813) HM
A scientist of national fame, Peters (1810-1888) lived for many years in Moulton with his wife Naomi (Leetch), a relative of President James K. Polk, who possibly visited here. A man of many talents, Peters was a noted linguist, early civil rights . . . — — Map (db m69670) HM
Local farmer Frank Davis and his wife, Annie Lee, offered their house as a classroom space for African American students after a devastating fire destroyed the North Alabama Baptist Academy building in 1928. Located in a part of town once known as . . . — — Map (db m277899) HM
The first African American student entered the library to register at Auburn University at this site. Acting on a court order, Auburn president Ralph Brown Draughon accepted the application of Harold Franklin as the first African American student in . . . — — Map (db m90861) HM
Organized in 1868 under the leadership of Reverend Father Glenn. Formed only five years after the Emancipation Proclamation was Signed, Bethesda became the first Black church in the city of Opelika. Bethesda, which means “House of Mercy,” was . . . — — Map (db m296495) HM
Founded in 1951, J.W. Darden served as Opelika's African American high school until integration in 1972. The school's namesake, Dr. John Wesley Darden, was the first African American doctor in Lee County. The school fostered pride and served as the . . . — — Map (db m285898) HM
Lynching in America
After the Civil War, the ideology of white supremacy led to violent
resistance to equal rights for Black people. Lynching emerged to enforce
racial hierarchy through arbitrary and deadly violence that terrorized
all . . . — — Map (db m176380) HM
The church, founded in 1893, played important
roles in the 1960s’ voting rights struggle in
Lowndes County. The second building constructed
in c. 1959 hosted community meetings and voter
registration activities. The Lowndes County
Freedom . . . — — Map (db m285535) HM
Johnathan Daniels was murdered near
this spot, then Cash's Store, on
August 20, 1965.
He gave his life in the fight for
integration of the churches
and universal voter registration.
At the time, he
was a divinity student at
The . . . — — Map (db m147604) HM
Lynching in America
Between the end of the Civil War and the close of World War II,
white mobs killed thousands of Black Americans in racial terror
lynchings, and committed widespread violence that traumatized
millions more. The Lowndes . . . — — Map (db m235867) HM
On August 20, 1965, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a 26-year-old
Episcopal seminarian from Keene, New Hampshire, was shot dead
at point blank range here. He was a graduate of Virginia Military
Institute and was attending Episcopal Theological School, . . . — — Map (db m147601) HM
Lowndesboro, AL—Enraged whites, jealous over the business success of a Negro are believed to be the lynchers of Elmore Bolling. Bolling, 39, was found riddled with shot gun and pistol shots 150 yards from his general merchandise store. It is . . . — — Map (db m184279) HM
In memory of our sister Viola Liuzzo who gave her life in the struggle for the right to vote... March 25, 1965 Presented by SCLC/WOMEN Evelyn G. Lowery, National Convener - 1991 - The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Joseph E. . . . — — Map (db m85461) HM
Enslavement & Racial Terror
The enslavement of black people in the United States was a brutal,
dehumanizing system that lasted more than 200 years. Between 1819
and 1860, Alabama's enslaved population grew from 40,000 to 435,000.
According . . . — — Map (db m154554) HM
Threatened by the potential four-to-one advantage of the black vote, whites retaliated by ousting black families from white-owned lands. The African American families who lived here paid dearly to earn their right to vote. Crowded into canvas tents . . . — — Map (db m112400) HM
Since the federal registrars came in August of 1965, thousands and thousands of Negroes have registered to vote. White plantation owners have retaliated by mass evictions. In December 1965, over forty families either left the county, moved in . . . — — Map (db m112405) HM
Monday, March 22, 1965, on the second day of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March, protesters passed this site in late afternoon. At that time the four-lane highway in front of you was only two lanes, and for safety reasons the number of . . . — — Map (db m112375) HM
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. . . . — — Map (db m112403) HM
While helicopters buzzed overhead, National Guard soldiers—ordered by President Lyndon Johnson to protect the marchers—lined U.S. Highway 80, alert to the potential of violence by angry whites. Marchers walked mile after tired mile, while black . . . — — Map (db m112384) HM
The roots of this house of worship date to 1868 when 26 African American members of Mount Gilead Church left to form their own congregation. The present building was constructed in 1901, with several enlargements and renovations throughout the . . . — — Map (db m104068) HM
For African Americans in the 1960s, being kicked off white-owned lands for trying to register to vote no isolated incident. Just as had happened here in Lowndes County, blacks in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Greene County, Alabama, were driven from . . . — — Map (db m112389) HM
In December 1965, a city of tents appeared on this site. The temporary shelters were homes for evicted black sharecropper families. These farmers worked and lived their lives on white-owned farms in Lowndes County. But when they dared to register to . . . — — Map (db m112371) HM
Shorter was originally called Cross Keys for the birthplace in South Carolina of an early settler, J.H. Howard. It was later named Shorter for former Alabama Governor John Gill Shorter. The town embodies the memories of the proud Creek Indian . . . — — Map (db m85463) HM
In 1957, local government officials in Tuskegee, Alabama sought to gerrymander the city's limits in an attempt to diminish the number of black votes in upcoming elections. Alabama state senator Sam Engelhardt sponsored Act 140, which transformed . . . — — Map (db m139876) HM
Churches within the African American community played an important role during the civil rights movement. They were places beyond control of white power structure, as well as locations where people could express themselves without reprisal. They . . . — — Map (db m139884) HM
Tuskegee consists of 80 square miles and is the county seat of Macon County, Alabama. Tuskegee rests in the heart of the rural Alabama Black Belt and is 40 miles east of Montgomery. Tuskegee was founded by General Thomas S. Woodward in 1833 after he . . . — — Map (db m99679) HM
Before the mid-1960s, Tuskegee’s black population faced many challenges when attempting to register to vote. Furthermore, the State of Alabama redrew the town’s political boundaries in an effort to prevent registered blacks from voting in local . . . — — Map (db m69048) HM
Macon County was created by the Alabama Legislature on December 18, 1832 and formed out of land formerly belonging to the Creek Indians. The County was named for Nathaniel Macon, a Revolutionary War soldier and long-serving political leader . . . — — Map (db m99677) HM
Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church developed out of the Tuskegee Baptist Church, originally organized in 1842. Although both whites and blacks (slaves) initially worshipped at the same location, the white congregants built a new facility in 1858, . . . — — Map (db m139880) HM
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913 – 2005) was an iconic activist during the mid twentieth century civil rights movement. Born in Tuskegee, Parks later moved with her mother to Pine Level located near Montgomery, Alabama. She was encouraged by . . . — — Map (db m134670) HM
Samuel "Sammy" Leamon Younge, Jr. (1944-1966), a civil rights and voting rights activist, was the first African American university student killed during the civil rights movement. A Tuskegee native, Younge was attending Tuskegee University when . . . — — Map (db m139875) HM
In August of 1963, the United States District Court M. D. Alabama sided with the plaintiff in Lee v. Macon County Board of Education. This pivotal civil rights case involved the integration of, the all-white Tuskegee High School (located on . . . — — Map (db m139878) HM
Following World War II, Tuskegee's black population began to grow, and many sought to register to vote. Perceiving a threat to their political power, white politicians tried to control the black vote through a variety of techniques. These actions . . . — — Map (db m139877) HM
Amelia Boynton Robinson (1911 2015) was a voting rights activist and civil rights icon. Born on August 18, 1911, in Savannah, Georgia, she received her bachelor's degree in home economics from Tuskegee University in 1927. In 1934, Mrs. Boynton . . . — — Map (db m139890) HM
Charles Goode Gomillion (1900-1995) was born on April 1, 1900, in Johnston, South Carolina. He joined the faculty at Tuskegee University in 1928, where he served as dean of students and chair of the social sciences department. He was president of . . . — — Map (db m140006) HM
Side 1
Born in 1930 in Montgomery, Gray was among the foremost civil rights attorneys of the 20th century. Forced by segregation to leave Alabama to attend law school, he vowed to return and "destroy everything segregated I could find." . . . — — Map (db m101898) HM
Jessie Parkhurst Guzman (1898-1996) was born in Savannah, Georgia, educated at Howard University (BA, 1919) and Columbia University (MA, 1924), and worked at Tuskegee University for over forty years. During Guzman's time at Tuskegee University, she . . . — — Map (db m139885) HM
The Tuskegee Institute Advancement League (TIAL) was a student-based organization started in 1963 and reorganized in 1965 during the school integration crises. It originally sought to gain a measure of academic freedom through input with the . . . — — Map (db m139886) HM
The Tuskegee Civic Association, whose offices were located here, started out of The Men’s Meeting of the 1920s and the Tuskegee Men’s Club of the 1930s. On April 13, 1941, in order to increase its effectiveness and to embrace all segments of the . . . — — Map (db m139923) HM
I determined when quite a small child . . . I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers.
—Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington changed the . . . — — Map (db m101932) HM
Platted in 1958, Edmonton Heights is among Huntsville's earliest planned suburbs designed for African Americans. Its development illustrates the combined effects of post-war growth and racial discrimination in federal and local housing policy upon . . . — — Map (db m277901) HM
Ratified in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote. To register to vote in Alabama citizens were required to meet a series of residency and property requirements, pass a literacy test, and pay a poll . . . — — Map (db m191678) HM
Ratified in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed women the right to vote. The Twickenham Town Chapter, NSDAR honors the history of Huntsville's pioneer suffragists, who met here at the home of Alberta Chapman Taylor . . . — — Map (db m160637) HM
Lynching in America
More than 6,500 Black men, women, and children were the victims of lynching in the United States between 1865 and 1950. After the Civil War, many white Southerners remained committed to the ideology of racial hierarchy and . . . — — Map (db m279892) HM
Side A
Dr. Joseph Echols Lowery was born in Huntsville on Oct 6, 1921, to Dora and Leroy Lowery. He grew up in Lakeside (Methodist) church. He began his education in Huntsville, spent his middle school years in Chicago, and returned to . . . — — Map (db m85550) HM
St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church in Huntsville was organized by Dr. William Hooper Councill and others in 1885. Dr. Councill was an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the founder and first president of Alabama . . . — — Map (db m234323) HM
The first integrated elementary education classes in the state of Alabama took place quietly and peacefully here September 3, 1963.
St. Joseph's Mission, church and school, was founded by the Society of the Divine Savior (Salvatorians) to serve . . . — — Map (db m154263) HM
Huntsville Equal Suffrage Association reorganized here in 1912. In 1914, Alabama Equal Suffrage Association held convention here. — — Map (db m191649) HM
A pioneer in the campaign for women's rights and equal opportunity,
Alice Boarman Baldridge was born in New Orleans in 1874. While enrolled
at Sophie Newcomb College she met Felix E. Baldridge, a medical student
at nearby Tulane. The couple . . . — — Map (db m280411) HM
The Grand Bay Elementary School for Colored was located on land adjacent to this building. Peter Alba donated the parcel on which the school was constructed in 1919. Soon thereafter, Black residents of Grand Bay and the Board of School . . . — — Map (db m189763) HM
Dr. Williams opened one of the early African-American drugstores- Live and Let Live on this site in 1901. Born on a sugar plantation in Louisiana, he graduated from Meharry Medical School in 1900 and was the second black physician to practice . . . — — Map (db m86393) HM
Eugenie Marx first president Mobile Equal Suffrage Assn. Educated and organized Mobile women to fight for the right to vote. Lived here 1910-1915. — — Map (db m226705) HM
John L. Finley Jr. opened Finley's Pharmacy #1 in 1950. John and his brother, James, established Finley's #2 in 1959, which was later sold to Benjamin F. Jackson, Sr.
James H. Finley, Sr. eventually opened six stores, launching the first . . . — — Map (db m151219) HM
A postal worker, a community leader, a state legislator, a journalist, and a civil rights activist, Mobile native John L. LeFlore spent 50 years working to peacefully transform the character of the city and create opportunities to enhance citizens' . . . — — Map (db m111413) HM
After the NAACP was outlawed in 1956, LeFlore and the Non-Partisan Voters League took a more active role in civil rights in Mobile. LeFlore served as its director of casework. He was a plaintiff in Bolden vs. Mobile and the judgement changed . . . — — Map (db m86391) HM
Judge Virgil Pittman
Thomas Virgil Pittman was born on March 28, 1916, in Enterprise AL. He graduated from the University of Alabama, in 1939 and its School of Law, in 1940. In June 1966, President Lyndon Johnson nominated, and the U.S. . . . — — Map (db m240387) HM
Lynching in America
Racial terror lynching claimed the lives of at least 6,500 Black people in the United States between 1865 and 1859. After the Civil War, many white people remained committed to white supremacy and used lethal violence . . . — — Map (db m202593) HM
Organized in 1899 as St. Anthony's Mission by Creoles of African descent. By 1901, Josephite priests Revs. Joseph St. Laurent and Louis Pastorelli had established a small school. The
present church was completed in 1908 and dedicated as Most Pure . . . — — Map (db m111302) HM
Oaklawn Cemetery is believed to have begun in 1876 as a local family cemetery plot, became a community cemetery by 1879, and expanded into a formally organized cemetery in 1931. Historical and burial information indicates this cemetery primarily . . . — — Map (db m159478) HM
Restoring Justice
Henry Williams, Johnny Williams, Ennis Bell, Theodore Wesley Samuels, Prentiss McCann, and Rayfield Davis all died at the height of the segregation era in Mobile. Mobile's Black community protested each of these deaths at the . . . — — Map (db m188735) HM
Vernon Crawford established the first African-American law firm in Mobile. He successfully argued the Birdie Mae Davis case that desegregated Mobile schools. He stood before the Supreme Court and won the landmark case of Bolden vs. the City of . . . — — Map (db m111319) HM
Side 1
On May 30, 1965, Vivian Malone, became the first African-American to graduate from the University of Alabama. To achieve admission at the all-White university, she was forced to confront then Governor, George C. Wallace, in what has . . . — — Map (db m111392) HM
Africatown, Alabama
Honor and Remembrance of the AncestorsOn July 9, 1860. the schooner Clotilda, America's last slave ship, arrived in the Port of Mobile from the West African slave Port of Whydah (Republic of Benin) where . . . — — Map (db m298171) HM
In 1860, 110 West Africans endured a harrowing Atlantic journey to Mobile Bay aboard the Clotilda, the last US ship to transport enslaved Africans.
As many as seven died at sea. The voyage was orchestrated by Timothy Meaher, who . . . — — Map (db m269504) HM
Lynching in America
Between 1865 and 1950, over 6,500 Black people were victims of racial terror lynching across the United States. After Emancipation, many white Southerners remained committed to an ideology of racial hierarchy and used . . . — — Map (db m300493) HM
Lynching in America
Between 1865 and 1950, over 6,500 Black people were victims of racial terror lynching across the United States. Almost 25% of lynchings involved allegations of inappropriate behavior between a Black man and a white . . . — — Map (db m300509) HM
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