Category: Culture
Opera Birmingham, Other Arts Groups Making Leadership Changes Ahead of Coming Season
Several of Birmingham’s premier arts organizations are making significant leadership changes ahead of their 2024-2025 seasons, shifts they say will position them for growth and continued community engagement. Read more.
How Birmingham Reflects an Entwined Struggle for Civil and Labor Rights
Movements for civil rights and workers’ rights often intersect. But many times the labor part of the picture is overlooked. That’s the case in Birmingham, which is well known for its civil rights history. Read more.
What the Lost Cause Narrative Masks About Alabama History
Many Alabama officials have for generations pushed the false narrative that residents of the state were nearly unanimous in their support for secession prior to the Civil War. Howell Raines, former executive editor of the New York Times and an Alabama native, says otherwise. Read more.
New Opera Delves Into Less Familiar Part of Helen Keller’s Story
The opera “Touch,” commissioned by Opera Birmingham, depicts Keller’s later life as an activist and feminist and her conflict with her interpreter, Anne Sullivan. Read more.
Givan to MLK Unity Breakfast: Focus Needs to Be on Voters, Poverty-Stricken Communities to Reach King’s Dream
Alabama House Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham, told a packed Great Hall at Birmingham-Southern College that there is work to do to fulfill the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Not only is our Black history under attack, but our most fundamental right that is allowed to us under the Constitution – our right to vote – is under attack,” Givan said at the 38th annual Unity Breakfast in celebration of the slain civil rights leader. “But I say to you, they don’t have to take it because we don’t utilize it.” Read more.
MLK Day is Monday. In Alabama and Mississippi, it’s also Robert E. Lee Day.
The leader of the Civil Rights Movement and a commander of the Confederate army both are honored on the same day. Not everyone is happy about that. Read more.
Leroy Stover, Bham’s First Black Police Officer, Dies at 90
Leroy Stover, the first Black to serve as a patrolman on the Birmingham Police Department, died Thursday. He was 90.
“Today, our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of former Deputy Chief Leroy Stover,” the police department released via social media. “As the first Black officer to integrate the Birmingham force, his legacy and work at the Birmingham Police Department paved a way for others to follow in his footsteps. We offer our full condolences to the family and know that he would forever be in our hearts and mind.”
Johnnie Johnson, who later became the first Black chief, immediately followed Stover onto the force one day later, in March 1963. They were followed by Bob Boswell and Frank Horn. Read more.
Birmingham Residents Reflect on 60th Anniversary of Church Bombing
At exactly 10:22 a.m. on Friday, church bells – and the shofar at Temple Beth-El synagogue – rang out across Birmingham to honor those killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. It’s the 60th anniversary of the deadly attack that killed four young girls — 11-year-old Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14 — and injured dozens more.
Inside the historic church, a crowd heard a message from Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Outside, small groups of people gathered all over the city to commemorate the anniversary and reflect on the violence of the past and the progress the community has made over the decades. Read more.
The Birmingham Zoo wants to build a new cat exhibit. First it must deal with unmarked graves
The zoo has filed for a permit with the Alabama Historical Commission to professionally exhume the graves and reinter them nearby. Read more.
Through Social Clubs and Education, Birmingham Woman Creates Community
Delena Chappel works to extend a sense of community to her students and other Black women. Read more.
