Tag: WBHM
A new stadium has been a 35-year conversation in Birmingham. It’s finally here.
For decades, there’s been talk about a new football stadium for Birmingham. Saturday, it will finally open, when the UAB Blazers play their first home game at the brand new Protective Stadium. Read more.
Alabama Names Ashley M. Jones as Its New Poet Laureate
Jones, a Birmingham native, is Alabama’s first Black poet laureate and the youngest person to hold the position. Read more.
HUD Secretary Touts ‘Millions and Millions of Dollars’ Coming to Birmingham for Infrastructure
One day after the Senate passed a $1 billion infrastructure bill, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge visited Birmingham Wednesday. Read more.
ACLU of Alabama’s Director Looks to the ‘Next Iteration of the Civil Rights Movement’
JaTaune Bosby, the first Black woman to lead the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, took the job during a tumultuous time in the country with the pandemic and last year’s summer of racial reckoning. Read more.
‘Buses Are a Comin’: Remembering the Freedom Riders 60 Years Later
A group of young civil rights activists began their journey to the South to challenge segregation on interstate buses in May 1961. The riders were taunted and beaten by white mobs – and jailed. Participants of the movement share what their fight means now. Read more.
The Unlikely Spark for Birmingham’s Negro League Reunion
Boston-native Cam Perron became obsessed with the Negro League as a child. That led to an annual reunion and friendships with players decades older. Read more.
Calls Continue Urging President Biden to Honor ‘Drum Major for Justice,’ Fred Gray Sr.
Even during a pandemic, you can find 90-year-old Fred Gray Sr. at his law office in Tuskegee. He’s been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
“He’s still working every day,” Fred Gray Jr. said. “It is not because he has to, but it’s because it’s that fire in his belly and it’s because he still wants to help people.”
Gray Jr. and his dad are partners in their law firm. Gray Jr. said his dad just won’t slow down. In fact he’s currently working on behalf of the Macon County Commission to remove a confederate monument in the heart of downtown Tuskegee.
Gray Jr. said his dad’s drive and tenacity are only part of the reason he should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
“His IQ and his work is right up there with men like Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill and Wiley Branton,” he said. Read more.
What Labor Wins And Losses In The South Can Tell Us About the Amazon Union Vote
The vote on whether or not to unionize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. may seem like a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a big union win in the South. Yet union organizers had an almost identical opportunity just four years ago in Canton, Miss.
Back then, Nissan assembly plant workers attracted global pro-labor support. But similar to Amazon, Nissan pushed back hard, determined to keep a union off its floor.
What happened in Canton, in other southern union elections and in the four years since can give us clues about what to expect from the Amazon vote.
Read more.
Remembering Homewood Resident And Civil Rights Activist Eileen Walbert
Alabamians are mourning the death of lifelong civil rights activist Eileen Walbert, a white woman who made fighting for racial equality her life’s work.
She and her husband Jim moved to Homewood in the late 40s. Born in Virginia in 1920, Walbert was aware of the racial tensions between Blacks and whites but moving to the deep south was different.
“She didn’t see the swastikas when she arrived here, but she saw the colored and white signs which represented the swastikas,” said historian Horace Huntley.
Huntley, former leader of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s oral history project, said Walbert was determined to challenge the racial inequalities of Birmingham and her Homewood neighborhood.
Walbert and her husband befriended a couple who were refugees from Europe during World War II. Soon after, the couple introduced the Walbert’s to the Civil Rights Movement.
Read more.
Watch the Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Live on WBHM
