An Angel In The Park

Kelly Ingram Park is in the heart of downtown Birmingham and was ground zero for the Civil Rights clashes of 1963. A small square block in size, it’s a quiet place today, sitting amid skyscrapers and office buildings. Trees, young and old, poke through the grass, green and brown. The park is not in great shape, its tattered edges speak of a long history torn and stitched by alternating times of neglect and care. Kitty-corner from the park stands the majestic 16th Street Baptist church, clad in brown brick. A couple-dozen concrete steps lead up to it’s front doors.



When we got out of the vans, church bells echoed off the walls of buildings. It was Sunday morning after all. The streets were silent, few cars and even fewer people could be seen. Birmingham was sleeping.

We purposed a visit to Kelley Ingram to finish out our tour of Alabama’s civil rights landmarks. It was in this park and specifically at the Baptist church on the corner that all was not quiet in September, 1963. This was the flashpoint of a clash that echoed even in the silence of this morning.

Perhaps the same church bells were ringing 45 years ago when the bomb blast cancelled them out. Three men of the KKK threw a stick of dynamite at the corner of the 16th Street Baptist church, killing four girls in their Sunday best, getting ready for Sunday school. The clock froze at 10:22 AM, the face of Jesus was blasted out of a stained glass window. Birds scattered in fright. Sirens wailed. People screamed. Mothers cried. It was noisy that day.

But not today. Today was quiet. The church has long since been repaired. Christians began climbing the steps for worship. Across the street, we walked through the shaded lanes of Kelley Ingram, pausing at the bronze memorials scattered throughout, each one erected to tell a muzzled story of an ugly time.



We were ready to leave, having seen all that we could see when a man on a bicycle approached us. He said his name was Juan. He was a veteran of Vietnam, homeless too -- a personal consequence, he told us, for abandoning King’s dream and listening to the victim theology of Malcolm X. He said he had been at Kelley Ingram back in ’63. He was sixteen then.

With an understated eloquence and a mastery of the details only one who had been there could relate, Juan proceeded to tell his story. With the church on one side and the historic park behind him, this unexpected visitor told of the horror that took place there during May of ’63 when Bull Connor’s fire department trained their hoses on demonstrators, “spraying folks off their feet and off the sidewalk, like leaves down a driveway.” He spoke of German shepherds, being told by the cops to attack the kids. There was pride in his voice when he gave the number of kids arrested that day, (600) and how they overflowed the city and county jails like rivers of injustice. His voice lifted when he described “jumping out of the school house windows across town on word that Dr. King was in town.”

Many of those who were battered there in Kelly Ingram were kids. 14 year olds. Like the 14 year old freshmen athletes from King High who listened to his tales with intention and attention beneath the shade of a tree. Juan’s weathered voice didn’t carry well despite the calm of the city; kids and parents leaned forward on his words.

“I thought you were joking when y’ll said you were from Martin Luther King High School. I looked at this group of kids and thought … hmmm, they’re from a school called Martin Luther King…?” We got a good laugh. Mr. Brooks stated the obvious, “Our country has come a long way.” Indeed it has.

We got Juan’s name on a handshake at the end of his talk. We hadn’t planned this … this collision of time and place at the intersection of Love and hate in Birmingham. Juan was like an angel sent to make the past immediately personal and present in our weekend story of struggle and triumph told mainly by those who had only heard of those times. Juan had lived it. He was there then, and he was there today. Arriving on his bicycle, 20 minutes later he had pedaled away, lost in the shadows of the trees and buildings that cover the bronze memorials that stand quietly telling a story that an angel named Juan has not forgotten.

I have to believe, neither will we.