Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park is a bit different from most city parks in most cities. True, it has grass and trees and pathways; and it has monuments.
But the monuments are not the usual noble statues of past heroes, though there are some. By and large, they are troubling reminders of a troubled and troubling time when the park was the center of Birmingham’s civil rights struggles and the center of America’s and the world’s attention in 1963.
Kelly Ingram Park was, as the sign says, ‘Ground Zero’ in May 1963, as thousands of high school students, younger children and parents took to the streets to demand an end to segregation, and were confronted by police, dogs and firemen with water cannons, under command of local police chief Bull Connor. Even today, the images are hard to look at, in photo or statue.
Walking through the park, which faces both the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, you are never far from reminders of what took place there; for me, facing the water cannon was a chilling enough moment, but walking along the Freedom Walk and passing between the snarling dogs left me actually fearful.
And that was nothing compared to what was faced by the demonstrators in 1963, who came to be called the ‘foot soldiers’ of the movement.
The two-piece sculpture at the top of the page honors them in a special way. Taken separately, it shows the children and their defiant slogan: “I ain’t afraid of your jail.” When viewed together, the meaning becomes clear.
Other figures of the struggles for freedom and civil rights are honored in the park, some from the 1960s, including Martin Luther King and other ministers who led Birmingham’s campaigns, and some from the decades before.
One of the most touching sculptures in the park is The Four Spirits, remembering the four young girls killed by a Ku Klux Klan bombing of the Sixteenth Street Church, only months after city officials had agreed to an end to official segregation.
