Today's pilgrimage

Today we met with Reverend Thomas Wilder pastor of Bethel Baptist Church. He shared with us the history of the churches involvement with the Civil Rights movement especially about Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

Reverend Shuttlesworth was about changing the law on behalf of integration and voting rights. He was fully committed to nonviolent resistance and he even had his home bombed along with the church three times. It was the church in the black community that gave people dignity, that God was their deliverer and that people were stronger on the inside because of their faith and their community in the church to resist all that was being done to them on the outside.

Alabama dismissed the a NAACP from the state so Reverend Shuttlesworth made his own organization, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. People would take a pledge be part of this organization which really called them to a transformative life. 

We had lunch together here and then moved to downtown Birmingham which had been the second most segregated city next to Johannesburg South Africa during the '50s and '60s. 

Between the '40s and the '60s there were over 50 bombings in Birmingham which caused it to be called "Bombingham".

Perhaps the most famous bombing was the 16th avenue Baptist Church in which for little girls were killed in an intentional bombing at the church.

We were to have gone to the Birmingham Civil Rights institute but because of weather it was closed.

Clearly there are different definitions of bad weather in each state!

So instead, we spent time in the Kelly Ingram Park. 

Statue of remembering the girls killed in the 16th avenue Baptist Church.

Dr Martin Luther King

A statue remembering the children's March and Crusade of 1962 to 63, for over a thousand children age 7 to 18 marched for civil rights on the streets of Birmingham.

This statue reminds us of the police brutality using dogs on the children.

The statue reminds us of when water cannons were used on children as well.

We stopped by the AG Gaston hotel which is listed in the "green book"as a safe place for negros to stay when traveling.

It was AG Gaston who was worth millions of dollars when he died who bailed out Dr King, Ralph Abernathy, and Andrew Young from the Birmingham jail.

This will commemorates the Birmingham pledge.

The Birmingham Pledge is a statement of principles at the heart of a grassroots effort, started in Birmingham, to address racism and prejudice. Launched in 1998, the Pledge spread worldwide, with tens of thousands of signers. Antiracism programs in all 50 states and more than 20 countries use the Birmingham Pledge in their efforts.

The Pledge was written by Birmingham attorney James E. Rotch in November 1997 during a return trip from a Leadership Alabama meeting in Mobile. The Pledge was initially promoted by the Community Affairs Committee of Operation New Birmingham, a diverse group of civic leaders that has met weekly since the 1960s. The Community Affairs Committee introduced it publicly at the 1998 Martin Luther King Unity Breakfast in Birmingham. There, more than 2,000 Birmingham residents joined in reciting the Pledge together. By 2008, when the Pledge celebrated its 10th anniversary, more than 120,000 individuals had returned signed copies of the Pledge or had signed the Pledge online.

The Birmingham Pledge

I believe that every person has worth as an individual.

I believe that every person is entitled to dignity and respect, regardless of race or color.

I believe that every thought and every act of racial prejudice is harmful; if it is my thought or act, then it is harmful to me as well as to others.

Therefore, from this day forward I will strive daily to eliminate racial prejudice from my thoughts and actions.

I will discourage racial prejudice by others at every opportunity.

I will treat all people with dignity and respect; and I will strive daily to honor this Pledge , knowing that the world will be a better place because of my effort.

And here we are in front of that wall commemorating our pledge to justice and peace!