The Sixteen Street Baptist Church was awarded the Trustees’ Emeritus Award for historic site stewardship by the National Trust for Historic Preservation on Monday, the only institution in the country to receive this recognition. Read more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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 zoo has filed for a permit with the Alabama Historical Commission to professionally exhume the graves and reinter them nearby. Read more.
