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16th Street Baptist Church: Still Standing
(The Root) — The doors of Birmingham, Ala.’s 16th Street Baptist Church are open seven days a week, and almost every day, visitors from across the country and around the world come to see the place where a bomb killed four little girls Sept. 15, 1963, at the height of the struggle for civil rights…
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Alabama County May Change Voting Rights
(The Root) — Drive beyond the tall iron gates of Highland Lakes in Shelby County, Ala., where homes range from $350,000 to a couple of million, and you’ll see that change has come to the South. Children of different races play together outside, while adults tend the yard or jog along the roads and trails.…
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50 Years After George Wallace's Stand
(The Root) — Fifteen years after Vivian Malone and James Hood successfully enrolled at the University of Alabama, I had my first day of classes in August of 1978 at the “Capstone of Higher Education” — the state’s flagship. On June 11, 1963, Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, an iconic segregationist, stood in the door…
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A Birmingham Prom 50 Years in the Making
(The Root) — Ethel and Eugene Arms have three children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Now, after 49 years of marriage, the Birmingham, Ala., couple have something they’ve waited on for 50 years: prom memories. The Ullman High School sweethearts didn’t go to the prom in 1963, because for students who attended black high schools…
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The Bronners: Twin Success at Spelman
(The Root) — Spelman College’s 2013 co-valedictorians, Kirstie and Kristie Bronner, come from a long line of success as part of America’s prominent family of hair-care entrepreneurs. Their father, Bishop Dale Bronner, is the pastor at one of the largest churches in Atlanta, and both their mother and grandmother preceded them as graduates of the…
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Children's March 1963: A Defiant Moment
(The Root) — Defying your parents’ orders not to march in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960s could have meant a whipping for teens. Defying the police commissioner’s order not to march protesting segregation could have meant attacks by dogs, blasts from fire hoses and a lockup in jail. Fifty years ago in the spring of…
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50 Years Late, a Prom Comes to Birmingham
(The Root) — Earnestine Thomas didn’t attend her senior prom before graduating in 1963 from Birmingham, Ala.’s A.H. Parker High School — there wasn’t one. She had planned on attending with friends and wearing a fancy, neon-hued dress that glittered in the lights. Senior proms and other end-of-school-year activities in Birmingham’s “colored” schools were canceled…
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What It Was Like to Be Jailed With MLK
(The Root) — The Rev. Jonathan McPherson went to jail for the first time in his life on Friday, April 12, 1963. It was Good Friday in Birmingham, Ala. Blacks on that day were defying an injunction outlawing protests, and under the leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth,…
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Erasing Jim Crow Not So Easy in Alabama
(The Root) — Jim Crow, that feisty fictitious character that symbolized segregation in the South for decades, is alive, well and on the ballot in Alabama in Tuesday’s general election. And depending on whom you ask, he may just win again. Since 1901 the Alabama Constitution has included language that requires separate schools for whites…
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Traveling the Freedom Riders' Route
(The Root) — The Greyhound Bus Station on South Court Street in downtown Montgomery, Ala., was supposed to be an ordinary stop for freedom riders in May 1961 traveling through the Deep South to challenge segregation. But for the riders, and even their federal-appointed escort, mob violence altered their course, marking an important touchstone in…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
