Stumble and Fall

I had the great pleasure of spending the morning on the trails of Oak Mountain State Park on a cool, crisp, clear day. I parked at the North Trail Head and took off up the rugged and steep Blue Trail. I was headed for King's Chair. Reaching the edge of the overlook, I took a few minutes to admire the view and reflect.

On the way down from King's Chair, it occurred to me that I had not fallen on a trail in awhile. I had hardly even stumbled on my way up. I found this amusing since I had recently fallen while running on the roads...twice. As I made my way along the South Rim on the Blue Trail, I was a extra careful with my footing not wanting to ruin my trail streak.

I also paused for a moment at the highest point in the park, Shackleford Peak, to take a few pictures and to rest for a bit. I knew that the toughest section of trail in the entire park lay before me: the descent on the White Trail. Fortunately, I had made the descent many times. I knew the trail well. I was familiar with its jagged rocks and sheer drop-offs. I knew the spots where I was likely to turn an ankle or stub my toe on a protruding root. I took my time. I was cautious. I carefully placed my feet on solid ground. And I did not fall.

As I reached the smooth trail at the bottom of the hill, I smiled at having avoided a tumble. I reflected on how I had averted trouble. I had experience. I had fallen in certain spots before. I was aware. I proactively looked for difficult situations and avoided them. 

I could not help but think about my life. I'm a little older now. I've made mistakes. But this experience has made me cognizant of the troubles I may encounter going forward. I know how to avoid the mistakes I've made in the past. I am familiar with the rocks in my life. I know the roots that have tripped me up before. And this has made me aware of other potential pitfalls that lay out there before me.

And so on I run while I still have strength. I could avoid stumbling altogether by not running trails. But, not falling is not the goal; successfully navigating the trails of my life is the goal. 

Funny how the words "trails" and "trials" are so close.

MLK Day Run 2016

For the past few years, some of my friends have honored Martin Luther King Jr. Day by visiting a few historic sites in downtown Birmingham. Last year, we invited a wider audience and formalized our tour. The tour includes many sites of interest with regards to the history of Birmingham with special emphasis on those sites with significance to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

I encourage you to visit the places listed below. Enjoy this virtual tour of Birmingham. Make plans to join us on MLK Day 2017.

• Railroad Park

• Railroad Park is a 19 acre green space in downtown Birmingham that celebrates the industrial and artistic heritage of our great city.
• Situated along 1st Avenue South, between 14th and 18th Streets, the park is a joint effort between the City of Birmingham and the Railroad Park Foundation.
• Hailed as "Birmingham's Living Room," Railroad Park provides a historically rich venue for local recreation, family activities, concerts, and cultural events, while connecting Birmingham's downtown area with Southside and UAB's campus.

• Negro Southern League Museum (NSLM)
• Tells the story of African-American baseball in America through the eyes of Birmingham, Alabama
• Exhibits highlight everything from the legacy of Jackie Robinson and the integration of Major League Baseball to individual players with local ties like Willie C. Young, a one-armed Birmingham native who pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons.
• The Birmingham Black Barons were the longest running team in Negro League Baseball history. They were charter members of the Negro Southern League in 1920 and still had a team in the league in 1962 when it folded.

• Lyric Theatre
• Built in 1914 for B.F. Keith’s Vaudeville circuit, the Lyric is one of the few theaters still existing that was specifically built to maximize the acoustics and close seating needed for vaudeville shows.
• Major stars such as the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Sophie Tucker, Will Rogers, and Milton Berle played the Lyric. Berle said it was ‘as fine a theater as any in New York.’
• During the 1920s it was the custom to attend shows at the Lyric Theatre on Monday nights – if you could get a reservation. Tickets cost from 25 to 75 cents.
• In summer, air was fanned over two tons of ice a day to keep customers cool.
• Though seating was segregated the Lyric was one of the first places in the South where blacks and whites could watch the same show at the same time for the same price.
• Grand Opening Ceremonies on January 14, 2016

• Alabama Theatre
• The Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, is a movie palace built by the Paramount-Publix Corporation in 1927.
• First public building in Alabama to have air conditioning
• Originally constructed to show silent films, the Alabama features an ornate Mighty Wurlitzer organ.
• In 1998, the Alabama underwent a complete restoration. Gold leaf and other paint was cleaned or replaced, seats were replaced or recovered, and some carpet and drapes were replaced.

• Alabama Walk of Fame
• 19 stars
• Actors including Tallulah Bankhead, Kate Jackson, and Jim Nabors
• Authors including Fannie Flagg, Truman Capote, and Harper Lee
• Only 1 African-American -- Nell Carter

• Eddie Kendrick Memorial Park
• Memorial garden to singer and Birmingham native Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations.
• Though Kendrick was born in Union Springs, his family moved to Birmingham while he was a boy. He met Paul Williams in their church choir in the late 1940s. They helped form the Temptations in Detroit in 1961.
• #1 hits included “My Girl”, "I Can't Get Next to You", and "Just My Imagination"
• The park uses Kendricks' family name sans the "s", which was added early in his career.
• Park features a bronze sculpture of Kendricks by local artist Ron McDowell, as well as sculptures of the other Temptations, set into a granite wall. The singers' cuffs each have a letter on them, together spelling "BHAM" from left to right.
• Inscribed on the granite are the names of Temptation's hit songs. Recorded music can be heard throughout the park, featuring songs by Kendricks and the Temptations.

• Carver Theatre/Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
• Erected in 1935.
• The theatre design was redrawn in 1945 and incorporated all of the modern comforts and features, including 1,300 of the latest model theatre chairs and the newest development in air conditioning, sound, and projection.
• The Carver was one of several theatres in the Fourth Avenue area offering first-run movies to African-Americans.
• The City of Birmingham began the renovation of the Carver Theatre as a performing arts theatre and the new home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and museum in 1990. The Carver Theatre operates as a non-profit, multi-use community theatre, open for bookings by local and national groups.
• This art-deco museum honors great jazz artists with ties to the state of Alabama. Exhibits convey the accomplishments of the likes of Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Erskine Hawkins and the music that made them famous.

• Black Masonic Temple
• Built in 1923, this Neo-classical Revival, seven-story stone, brick and steel structure served as a principal center of social and cultural life in the era of segregation.
• Black doctors and lawyers had their offices here, as did other prominent African-American community leaders and organizations.
• The building, which still serves as home to Birmingham's African-American Masons, was a staging ground for much of the Civil Rights activities in Birmingham. The city's first major gathering of civil rights activists took place in the building in 1932.
• Designed by a black architect and built by a black construction firm, the temple is highly regarded for its architectural significance.

• Kelly Ingram Park
• Four acre park, just outside the doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, served as a central staging ground for large-scale demonstrations during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
• First known as West Park and later called West End Park, it was one of the University of Alabama football team's home fields between 1901 and 1904. The 1902, 1904, and 1905 rivalry games against what would become Auburn University were played there.
• The park was renamed in 1932 for local firefighter Osmond Kelly Ingram, who was the first sailor in the United States Navy to be killed in World War I.
• Reverends Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fred Shuttlesworth directed the organized boycotts and protests of 1963 which centered on Kelly Ingram Park.
• It was here, during the first week of May 1963 that Birmingham police and firemen, under orders from Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, confronted demonstrators, many of them children, first with mass arrests and then with police dogs and firehoses.
• Images from those confrontations, broadcast nationwide, spurred a public outcry which turned the nation's attention to the struggle for racial equality and helped insure the passage of Civil Rights laws and bring an end to public segregation.

• Sculptures & Statues
• “Three Ministers Kneeling”
• The sculpture depicts the moment on April 7, 1963 (Palm Sunday) when three ministers, John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith and A. D. King, led a group of 2,000 marchers protesting the jailing of movement leaders Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth. When they were confronted by Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor and his police, the three immediately knelt to pray on the sidewalk.

• “Ground Zero”
• You are standing at Ground Zero on the 1963 civil rights struggle in Birmingham. When African-American leaders and citizens resolved to fight the oppression of a strictly segregated society, they were met with vitriol and violence despite their own determinedly peaceful approach.

• “The Foot Soldiers”
• This sculpture is dedicated to the foot soldiers of the Birmingham Civil Rights movement. With gallantry, courage, and great bravery, they faced the violence of attack dogs, high powered water hoses, and bombings. They were the fodder in the advance against injustice, warriors of a just cause. They represent humanity unshaken in the firm belief in their nation's commitment to liberty and justice for all.
• We salute these men and women who were the soldiers of this great cause.

• “The Children’s Crusade”
• 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 in which you stand now. With his cells full and his back against the wall, Connor responded savagely.

• “Water Cannons”
• 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 attempted to intervene, but a defiant Connor continued to brutalize and imprison indiscriminately.

• “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
• “...Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace…”
• His dream liberated Birmingham from itself and began a new day of love, mutual respect and cooperation.
• “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” -- April,16 1963
• “...I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.”
• “I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
• “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed... We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”
• “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

• “Four Spirits”
• A memorial for the four little girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.
• Inscription on bench: "A Love That Forgives" was the title of the sermon for September 15, 1963, the day the bomb went off.
• The sculpture shows one girl tying a bow on the dress of another girl who is releasing doves into the air.
• The six doves being released stand for each of the four girls and two boys killed the same day, Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson.

• Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
• The Institute showcases a walking journey through the "living institution", which displays the lessons of the past as a positive way to chart new directions for the future. The permanent exhibitions are a self-directed journey through Birmingham's contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and human rights struggles.

• “Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth”
• No one did more to bring about positive change in Birmingham than the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. In his struggle for equal rights, he survived a series of assaults, including the bombing of his home and a brutal armed beating by the Ku Klux Klan.

• 16th Street Baptist Church
• Organized in 1873 as the First Colored Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama. 16th Street was the first black church in Birmingham.
• In 1880 the congregation moved to its present location at 16th Street and 6th Avenue North.  The present church was completed in 1911.
• Because of segregation, the church, and other black churches in Birmingham, served many purposes.  It functioned as a meeting place, social center and lecture hall.
• Due to Sixteenth Street’s prominence in the black community, and its central location to downtown Birmingham, the church served as headquarters for the civil rights mass meetings and rallies in the early 1960’s.
• On Sunday, September 15, 1963, at 10:22 a.m., the church became known around the world when a bomb exploded, killing four young girls attending Sunday School and injuring more than 20 other members of the congregation.  Later that same evening, in different parts of town, a black youth was killed by police and one was murdered by a mob of white men.  It was a shocking, terrifying day in the history of Birmingham and a day that forced white leaders to further come to grips with the city’s bitter racist reputation.
• The tragedy of that Sunday produced outpourings of sympathy, concern and financial contributions from all parts of the world. More than $300,000.00 was contributed for the restoration of the damaged church. It was reopened for services Sunday, June 7, 1964.

Birmingham Civil Rights Timeline (www.bhamwiki.com)

Birmingham Civil Rights Timeline (al.com)