Gillie Finally Goes to Birmingham, 2015

Song of the Day:

Today I finally got to go to Birmingham! We decided that we were going to go to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. It started with a video, and then the screen rolled up into the first gallery. The first display was the whites only and “Coloreds” only water fountains. The whites’ only water fountain was nice, new, and refrigerated. On the other hand, the “coloreds” one was an old sink like thing with rust, and it was sticking out of the wall, not just  sitting on the floor like the white one. One of our favorite things in the museum was: You could see a white classroom and a black classroom, there were two stacks of shirts, one was the income of white-blue collar white collar, and the income of African Americans. You could also see a barber shop, a church, and even signs for white and African American minstrel shows. All over the museum were old signs of colored only, and white only  signs.- it was really disturbing to be able to see those signs.

They also had a whole room explaining the 16^th street Baptist church bombing. You could see Carol Denise McNair’s shoes, necklace, mini children’s Bible, purse, change purse, her hat, and the brick that went into her skull; she was only eleven.

We then went to see the 16^th Street Baptist Church (they rebuilt it) but incredibly the sign was still left, the original sign for the church!! It was really moving to get to see that.

We then went just across the street to the Kelly Ingram Park, the place where the children of Birmingham would meet and get hosed down by firefighter hoses and attacked by police dogs. It also doubled as a statue park. They had statues of the four little girls that got killed during the church bombing, three pastors, kids getting hoses sprayed at them, three germen shepherds, and two kids with “I ain’t afraid of your jail,” in a jail cell, and a boy being grabbed by his shirt collar by a policeman. There was also one of Martin Luther King Jr. It was incredible to be able to see the park where kids my age were beat, and sprayed down as they fought for justice.