Birmingham Civil Rights District

PRESERVING THE STORY OF BIRMINGHAM FOR
FUTURE GENERATIONS

About

The Birmingham Civil Rights District

The Birmingham Civil Rights District, located in downtown Birmingham, encompasses a number of churches, businesses, and other gathering places that played a fundamental role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Many of these sites are within walking distance of one another.

The District encompasses a museum and educational institute; several churches and a motel, all of which played a major role in the Birmingham campaign; and a neighborhood that was the center of Black business and social life in the city, which includes several historic buildings awaiting their chance at refurbishment.

Several of the sites are part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, a collaborative partnership between the National Park Service and the City of Birmingham. The Birmingham Civil Rights District website is organized to help visitors discover how to experience these historic sites virtually and in-person tours.

Learn more about the sites within the District

“If you come to Birmingham, you will not only gain prestige but really shake the country. If you win in Birmingham, as Birmingham goes, so goes the nation.”
– Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

Long before Birmingham played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement, it was home to a thriving Black community. Segregation prevented Black residents from entering white-owned businesses, so many went into business for themselves, serving a Black clientele.
Along 4th Avenue, you could find the Penny Savings Bank, the first Black-owned and -operated bank in Alabama; the Carver Theatre, which showed first-run movies; and the celebrated Masonic Temple, home to a grand ballroom as well as a library, office space, and a soda fountain. Black professionals such as lawyers and doctors maintained offices there as well.

The city was also home to the Black Barons, a Negro League baseball team that counted legends such as Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and William Henry Greason among their players.

The 1950s
In the late 1940s, a number of Black families sought to purchase homes in white neighborhoods. The KKK responded by firing shots and setting off bombs, eventually earning the city the nickname of ‘Bombingham.’
Segregation was the order of the day, and Black citizens were barred from sharing public facilities with white residents. They were unable to work in white-owned businesses and were paid less than whites for manual labor jobs.
Under the leadership of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, groups began to organize. In 1956, the state of Alabama outlawed the NAACP, so Rev. Shuttlesworth created the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR).
Members of the ACMHR, led by Rev. Shuttlesworth, conducted demonstrations and challenged segregated facilities in Birmingham. Rev. Shuttlesworth also made an early attempt at integrating Birmingham schools by enrolling his own daughters. The organization grew to include over 50 churches and initiated numerous lawsuits that reached the United States Supreme Court.
In response to the ACHMR’s activism, the Bethel Baptist Church and its parsonage were bombed three times—once on Christmas Day, 1956.
The 1960s
By 1961, the ACHMR was working with the Congress for Racial Equality on the Freedom Rides campaign. Riders arriving at the Birmingham bus terminal were attacked by the KKK, abetted by commissioner Bull Connor.
After receiving a plea from Rev. Shuttlesworth, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference selected Birmingham as the site of their next campaign. It began in 1962 with a selective boycott. Marches and sit-ins followed in the spring of 1963.
On April 12—Good Friday—Dr. King was arrested and taken to jail. There he would write his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Eight days later, after businessman A.G. Gaston paid his bail, Dr. King was released.

“I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes.”
– Dr. King, Letter from Birmingham Jail

In May 1963, students walked out of school and held a march that would come to be known as the Children’s Crusade. Despite the youth of the marchers, the Birmingham police responded with police dogs, water hoses, and billy clubs. Images of this violence traveled around the world—including the White House, leading President John F. Kennedy to demand that Alabama leadership come to the negotiating table.
After tense negotiations, an accord was reached—angering white residents, who bombed the A.G. Gaston Motel, where Dr. King was staying, as well as his brother’s house. Riots broke out afterward, and federal troops were sent to restore order in the city.
By June of 1963, signs dictating the exclusion of Black residents were taken down in Birmingham. Public schools in the city were integrated in September of the same year, although Alabama Gov. George Wallace tried to block Black students from attending.
In August, Dr. King would give his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington. The following year, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Civil Rights Act of 1964—which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin—passed the Senate in June and was signed into law on July 2nd.

Birmingham Civil Rights District

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