Fourth Avenue, A. G. Gaston, the Children's Crusade and the four girls of 16th Street.
Fourth Avenue And A. G. Gaston
For decades the Fourth Avenue Business District was the hub of Black Birmingham, home to much of the city's Black-owned business and entertainment. Arthur George Gaston, born in Demopolis in 1892 and the grandson of an enslaved man, built his fortune there. He noticed miners' widows collecting donations to bury their husbands and in 1923 founded the Booker T. Washington Burial Insurance Company. He went on to open Citizens Federal Savings and Loan, the first Black-owned financial institution in Birmingham in more than forty years, and on July 1, 1954, the A. G. Gaston Motel beside Kelly Ingram Park.
16th Street Baptist Church
The 16th Street Baptist Church was organized in 1873 as the First Colored Baptist Church of Birmingham, reportedly the first Black church in a city then only two years old. In the 1960s it was the headquarters and rallying point of the movement, where Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel spoke to mass meetings.
The Birmingham Campaign
In 1956 Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to challenge segregation in the courts and the streets. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference met at the Gaston Motel, and Gaston posted bail when King and Ralph Abernathy were arrested. From jail King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
In May, hundreds of children, from high schoolers down to first graders, walked out of school and marched, and Bull Connor's police turned dogs and fire hoses on them in Kelly Ingram Park. The campaign forced Connor from office, won desegregation in Birmingham and helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
September 15, 1963
On a Sunday morning in September 1963, three Ku Klux Klan members bombed the church, killing four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair, and injuring 22 other people.
Black Birmingham Today
On January 12, 2017, the church, Kelly Ingram Park, the Gaston Motel, the Fourth Avenue district and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, open since 1993, became the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Birmingham.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Birmingham, Alabama on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Kelly Ingram Park. Photo: Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Photo: Chris Pruitt, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons