Day Four: A Morning of Study at the Birmingham Civil Rights Insitute

After an exhilarating, yet exhausting three days of travel (logging more than 1,100 miles on our bus in that short time), it was hard to say what I was looking forward to most this morning--a tour of Kelly Ingram Park, the 16th St. Baptist Church, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, or not having to drive more than about 20 miles during the day.

Moments after seeing our tour group experience the memorial Freedom Walk in Kelly Ingram Park, however, the purpose of our tour won the day. We spent nearly an hour taking in the various monuments representing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership during Project C and the violent reactions of Bull Connor's public safety force to the Children's Campaign in 1963.

What struck me most about the morning was the serious manner in which the Stratford-Richardson kids took in the park. It was obvious that they related directly to the narrative of the children's marches, especially knowing that the lion's share of the participants were their age and younger.

The group spent the balance of the morning at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. In just a few short years, the BCRI has emerged as a first-class organization for the preservation of civil rights history and the education of school children, tourists, and scholars. The interactive museum is engaging throughout, and I looked forward to taking it in for a second time. Our experience was unexpectedly enhanced when the group tours director, LaQuita Singleton arranged a pair of docents to lead us through the gallery. What made this time even more special was the fact that both docents were young high school students. The BCRI has developed a 12-week training program for students not only to engage in the study of the Civil Rights Movement, but also to share that knowledge with patrons of the museum. I was highly impressed with their understanding of the nuances of Birmingham's civil rights history and their confident interaction with our own teens.

From the example of the work of the BCRI in Birmingham and Stratford-Richardson's teen program in Charlotte, I feel safe in saying that the future is in good hands.