Birmingham Civil Rights Museum - Not Ready to Be Read

Even though I'm not finished with this yet, I'm publishing it to hold its chronological spot in line.  I'll let you know when I've got it ready to be read.

Birmingham Civil Rights Museum

Although this museum focuses primarily on civil rights events here in Birmingham, I think it's also geared for folks statewide.  The National Civil Rights Museum is in Memphis (TN), and that tries to cover the full sweep of the struggle for civil rights of African-Americans.  In contrast, this museum includes some things that happened outside Alabama, but its main focus is events in the state, and especially in Birmingham.

There's a lot of information there and I'm having trouble figuring out how to arrange it so I can write about it.  I know museums take a great deal of trouble to arrange their exhibits in an order that makes sense to them, but because I don't have the same deep knowledge of their subjects I can't always understand them.  This is my best pass at it, in an order that makes sense to me.

The phrase "Jim Crow" as applied to denigrate African-Americans was created as long ago in the 1830s.  It was the name of a character created by a white performer wearing blackface makeup in a minstrel show.  The character was popular among white audiences because it illustrated their belief that black people were inherently inferior.  The phrase expanded in the 1840s when a northern railroad used it to designate a separate railway car where blacks were segregated.

Stereotypes

"Though less offensive than some Black images
used to sell products, Aunt Jemima reinforced
the stereotype of the happy, overweight
'Mammy' figure."

The caption at left reads: "Though less offensive than some Black images used to sell products, Aunt Jemima reinforced the stereotype of the happy, overweight "Mammy" figure."  (Notably, as one result of George Floyd's death in May (2020) and the ensuing conscious-raising among whites of racial injustices and stereotypes, Quaker Oats is retiring the character.)


























Enforcing the stereotype

Ku Klux Klan

the robe and hood were
an anonymous donation

Although Pres. Grant managed to wipe out the KKK in 1871, it was resurrected in 1915, thanks in large part to the popularity of a movie: The Birth of A Nation.

Perpetuating the stereotype
The assumption that white people were inherently superior to black people allowed systems to arise that exploited and abused blacks. 

Convict labor was one example.

Housing policies were another area of discrimination.  Almost like Nazi Germany's Jewish ghettos in Nazi Germany, Birmingham and other cities limited African-Americans to specific small areas of town for housing, and all blacks had to cram into these areas.  The map below is from 1926.

Strict segregation of the races was not only societal practice, it had been codified into law and was being enforced.

this summary was dated 1951,
but the ordinances were passed long before

part 2 from above listing prohibited racial intermingling
including dominoes and checkers

Schools, of course, have been the subject of so many court cases it's undisputed that education facilities for blacks have never been as good as those for whites.

inequities in schooling and jobs

Voting denial is another well-
known limit.  The stereotype said blacks simply didn't want to vote and wouldn't understand the ballot if they had the right.

Once they were allowed to vote,  African-Americans did so in such high numbers as to dispel forever these ideas.



















Civil rights opposition
Lynchings

Certainly the Ku Klux Klan is the best known organized opposition to civil rights for African-Americans, but they didn't act alone.  Many ordinary citizens attended lynchings.  And one of the photos below shows 2 members of the National States Rights Party (didn't we already fight a war over this?), a group separate from the KKK.

the irony: they're protesting
the protests

all these ordinary-looking people are smiling -
smiling

Ida B. Wells
This journalist fought against the lynchings almost single-handedly.

"Lynching of black man in Texas, ca. 1893"

The Great Migration

Bombings
As if lynching weren't enough (or maybe because it wasn't enough), the campaign of white intimidation against the black community included bombs - especially in Birmingham, where dynamite was easy to get from the coal mines in the area.

these bombings were in 1949 and 1957

Civil Rights protests
These started much earlier than I realized, probably because African-Americans got tired of being lynched and bombed out of their homes and churches much earlier than I'd realized.  At first, the protests happened separate from each other, organized through churches and through whole communities.  And they took many forms.

Bus Boycotts
These happened in several cities, but the most famous one was in Montgomery in 1955.  Rosa Parks said she acted as she did because she was tired - tired of always giving in to injustices.  She was dragged off the bus and arrested; a few days later blacks organized a 1-day boycott of the city's buses.  That day was so successful that they extended it, trying to get these injustices rectified.  The boycott lasted more than a year before the bus line gave in.

A few years earlier, Baton Rouge had their own bus boycott.  That one was successful after only 8 days (see photo below).

Baton Rouge in 1953

Sit-ins
These began in early 1960 with 4 college students in Greensboro, NC, and they spread like wildfire.

Greensboro, NC - February 1, 1960

Raleigh, NC - February 10, 1960

Jail-ins

In SC, students added another tactic to their non-violent protest list: when they were arrested, they refused to post bail.  While they were in jail they were subjected to hard labor and abuse, but they resented having to come up with money for bail for charges they regarded as illegal in the first place.

It didn't change anything at the time, but this tactic continued to be used throughout the 60s and eventually became a real problem for authorities.  They were faced at times with a lack of facilities to hold all the people they were arresting, people they had to feed and provide at least minimal care for.  It began costing towns a lot of money to house them all.

Freedom Rides
These got a lot of national press, mainly because of the violent local response along the way.

the bombing

Based on the Commerce Clause in the Constitution, the US Supreme Court had banned segregation on interstate buses.  Southern states refused to recognize that ruling, just as they were refusing to desegregate schools as mandated by the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

its result

Determined to change that, in May 1961 a group of black and white citizens boarded a bus in Washington, DC, bound for New Orleans.  They made it as far as Anniston, AL, before trouble hit.  A mob forced the bus to stop, then threw a firebomb inside the bus.  All the riders managed to escape, but the bus was completely destroyed.



Another bus was found and it got as far as Birmingham, where the riders were attacked by another mob; no police were in sight despite a nearby police station, an absence they explained as being due to its being Mother's Day.


There were more beatings at the bus station in Montgomery.  Finally a bus made it in to Jackson, MS, where there were no mobs - the riders were arrested instead.


(There is, of course, a great deal more to this story, but this is what they had at the Birmingham museum.)




Organization