BY PAUL COLTRIN
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - On the morning of December 20, participants in the regional socialist conference here visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI). The BCRI's museum depicts conditions under Jim Crow segregation and the intense battles for Black rights that unfolded in the 1950s and '60s, including the Battle of Birmingham in the spring of 1963.

Many visitors also walked through Kelly Ingram Park, across the street from the BCRI, which served as a gathering point for the mass demonstrations for Black rights in the early and mid- 1960s.

The park includes sculptures portraying the use of attack dogs and high-pressure water hoses on the demonstrators, many of whom were children and youth. Also next door to the institute stands the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of the racist bombing in 1963 that killed four young Black girls.

The tour of the museum began with a brief film covering Birmingham's first 50 years from its founding in 1871. The film describes how Black labor in the burgeoning coal mines and steel mills built Birmingham into a major industrial center in the South. According to the film, Black workers formed unions to defend their rights, but strikes in 1894 and 1908 were violently crushed by the bosses. The film also describes the establishment of Jim Crow segregation backed up by the racist lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan.

The museum then offers displays and photographs depicting Jim Crow segregation and the second-class status legally enforced against Blacks throughout the southern United States. This part of the museum includes portrayals of blatantly inferior public facilities for Blacks, laws such as one prohibiting whites and Blacks playing checkers together, life in company housing, Black culture during the Jim Crow era, and unequal treatment of Blacks at the hands of the police and courts.

The bulk of the museum then documents the civil rights struggles in the South, and particularly in Alabama, from the early 1950s through the 1960s. Among the displays is the charred front end of a firebombed Greyhound bus, which was used in the Freedom Rides, where Black and white youth traveled through the South in defiance of laws against integrated travel. The bus was firebombed and the activists aboard were assaulted by a racist mob that was given free reign by the local police.

Visitors also watched a video wall showing actual footage of the mass demonstrations in Birmingham that expanded and drew in more of the city's working class in the face of brutal police repression. That display included some of the headlines about the struggle in Birmingham from papers around the world.

Many of the young people and workers from other countries who attended the conference here knew little about the mighty battles that brought down Jim Crow, and were eager to discuss the exhibit with others who had participated in the struggle. "It's unbelievable that this could have happened only 30 years ago," remarked Miguel Rodríguez, who came from Atlanta.

For other visitors, the content of the museum reminded them of their own political experiences. "In 1970 I participated in a voter registration drive in a town in southern Georgia where Blacks were still disenfranchised," said Mary Martin, a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1759 in Washington, D.C. Martin described how the local government tried to block Blacks from registering and how the drive was eventually successful. "It was my first political activity, and it taught me a real lesson on the need for collective action," said Martin.

"I think we need more museums like this one," said Ned Palmer, a high school student from Houston. "This really gives you a feel for the struggle that took place and the courage that it took."

The trip to the museum was particularly helpful for those conference participants who attended the next day's class on the Battle of Birmingham and the lessons it holds for revolutionaries today.

Paul Coltrin is a member of the Young Socialists in Pittsburgh.  
 
 
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