The need for such an institute was first mentioned in a press conference in 1977 by progressive white mayor David Vann. Richard J. Arrington Jr., who was elected as Birmingham's first African American mayor in 1979, appointed a task force to create a mission statement and plan for the facility. Arrington named Odessa Woolfolk, then-director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Center for Urban Affairs, and Frank Young, who was chairman of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, as co-chairs. Arrington envisioned a place where people of all backgrounds and ages could learn about an essential element of the history of Birmingham and Alabama. In the first planning meeting, Arrington remembered the long journey that he and other black citizens undertook during the height of the civil rights era. He wanted the institute to commemorate that journey and its significance to the city and to all African Americans in the South. In 1988, Arrington authorized plans for a Civil Rights Cultural District that included the renovation of Kelly Ingram Park, the public space around the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (infamous as the site of a bombing that took the lives of four young African American girls), and the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in the historic Carver Theatre, as well as the establishment of the BCRI.
The interior halls of the BCRI encourage visitors to feel as though they are being transported to a not-too-distant past when Jim Crow laws ruled a segregated South. At the time, Birmingham was one of the most violent cities in the South, local police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Conner hurled racist epithets, and African Americans suffered constant abuses to their rights and themselves.
The main room displays a replica of a bus from the Freedom Rides, which became a symbol for the movement after its participants met with violence three times in Alabama. In addition to this historical display, visitors may view a 12-minute film Going Up to Birmingham, which chronicles the history of the city. In the Barriers Gallery, 14 exhibits document everyday life in the early days of segregation in the city. The displays include an entrance to a coal mine, a segregated streetcar, a newspaper office in the early twentieth century, a narrow "shotgun" house, a classroom, and a church. As visitors move from exhibit to exhibit, a video jukebox plays music that might have been heard on the streets of Birmingham during each period. In the Confrontation Gallery, visitors may read an account of violence on the streets, hear the intimidating words of a white politician, and experience the degradation many black citizens felt as they traversed the streets after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the separate-but-equal philosophy of a segregated school system. Many white citizens, angered by the decision, responded by organizing. During this time, the Ku Klux Klan became resurgent in the South, people organized White Citizens' Councils, and men like Connor rose to power. Throughout the gallery, visitors are bombarded with the angry, racist words of white figures of authority, sounds that were all too common in the city that came to be called "Bombingham." From the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, the black citizens of the city were terrorized by nearly 50 unsolved racially motivated bomb attacks.
Additional Resources
McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Williams, Donnie, and Wayne Greenhaw. The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People who Broke the Back of Jim Crow. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2005.
