Destination Freedom...Four Little Girls



Plaque commemorating the four girls killed in the 16th Street
Baptist Church Bombing

Our kickoff for the Destination Freedom series is scheduled for one week from today on Sunday, Sept. 15. The timing of the event is meant to be commemorative.

If you have been following this blog and the Civil Rights timeline, the reasons are insurmountable. On Sept. 15, 1963, the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed after the KKK planted dynamite in the church’s basement. The bombing killed four young girls: Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14.

News of the bombing shook the nation. Everyone, including Dr. King, heard what happened and then had to ponder: what kind of hate and racism would allow the killing of young girls at their church on a Sunday morning?

Yet despite the public outrage, it took years to convict the perpetrators of the crime. It has taken years more to answer other questions that the tragedy brings to the fore:

Have we as a nation made it possible for young people (of every color) to feel safer?

Are those who would use violence to further their ideology more likely to be brought to justice today?

Who else, or where else, might be a target for those looking to send a message of fear?



The aftermath of the dynamite explosion at 16th Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama

The 16^th Street Church bombing was a significant event in 1963, and it still has reverberations today. Coming after the successful Children’s March and Birmingham campaign (where the 16th Street Baptist Church played a critical role as a meeting place for activists) and the success of the iconic March on Washington, the bombing reminded many of how much work was left undone and how much harm activists were putting themselves in the way of. It also reminded many of what was truly at stake with civil rights: the ability not just to protect those 4 girls but all children so they can grow up in a world free from the dangers their skin color could cause.

In May 2013, President Barack Obama awarded the four girls The Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors. Read about this historic honor here. 

That is one of the many ways the girls’ legacy is being honored. Today from 2:30-4:30 p.m. Levine Museum will host a screening of the film 4 Little Girls. The documentary, directed by Spike Lee, looks at the lives, loss and continued impact of the bombing.

Share your thoughts with us on Twitter @LevineMuseum. Follow along using the hashtag #DestinationFreedom.
You can also find us at Facebook.com/Levine Museum to RSVP to the screening and learn more about the Destination Freedom series.

See you on the 15^th for the kickoff!

Destination Freedom...The Artists Capturing the Civil Rights Movement

As soon as the landmark events and changes of the Civil Rights Movement began, there were artists—ranging from singers, authors, painters, playwrights, dancers, and more—who tried to capture the stories and explain their impact.

Hughes

We can read it within the works of poet Langston Hughes, who depicted the activists, angst, letdowns and promise of the movement. A poet who burst to the national scene during the 1920’s-1930’s Harlem Renaissance, Hughes had long dealt with the themes of being black in America as well as freedom and equality in his writings.

His poem “Birmingham Sunday” (you can read here), looked at the events of the 16^th Street Baptist church bombing, while the poem “Go Slow” responds to those who criticized the movement as being too confrontational—the same criticism that inspired Dr. Martin Luther King to write his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In other works like “Freedom [3],” “Bombings in Dixie,” and “Death in Yorkville” about the 1964 death of James Powell, Hughes explored the many questions and contradictions of American democracy that the movement exposed.

Another author dealing with the events in 1963 in his works was Christopher Paul Curtis. His 1995 novel “The Watsons Go to Birmingham,” won a Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award for children’s literature in its depiction of a family that lives through the 16^th Street bombing and has to find ways to deal with its emotional aftermath. The book has been turned to a television movie which will air on Sept. 20, 2013. Here is more information about the movie adaptation.

Lukova's "I Have a Dream"

Contemporary visual artist Luba Lukova, whose work is featured in the Network of Mutuality: 50 Years Post Birmingham, now on exhibit at Levine Museum, looks at 1963 in a different medium. Using graphics, her work “I Have a Dream” juxtaposes images of Dr. King with the violent attack dogs Birmingham police used in 1963. Lukova has been heralded for her provocative work. The exhibit Network of Mutuality, has been called not only timely but an exhibit that raises questions, through art, for a continuing dialogue about the state of race relations and the quest for equality, freedom and just today.

Public art at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama

Sculptor James Drake also responded to events in Birmingham in 1963 through art. Drake crafted three sculptural pieces that line Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park, the site of some of the most shocking events in the Children’s March. Drake’s sculptures, which depict the shocking scenes of police-led terror on protesters (including police dog attacks and the use of fire-hoses on children), evokes a real sense of what it would have been like to participate in the protests but also reveals how art can translate history in a powerful way.

How do you remember learning about the events of 1963?

What are some of your favorite artistic pieces that deal with the Civil Rights Movement?

If you were an artist, how would you choose to represent the civil rights events of then or now in art?

Share your answers with us on Twitter @LevineMuseum. Follow along using the hashtag #DestinationFreedom.

Or visit us at www.Facebook.com/LevineMuseum to see how social media connects artists, museums and visitors to the stories of the past.

Destination Freedom...Pivotal Moments in 1963

The Civil Rights Movement is considered the pivotal moment of the 20^th century.

1963 is considered a turning point of the Civil Rights Movement.

There are many reasons why:

On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is put in a Birmingham city jail. His arrest and the critique from fellow clergymen urging protesters to take change "slow," prompted Dr. King to write the now widely known, "A Letter from a Birmingham City Jail." This letter, in short, advocated for Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolent direct action.  In the opening pages he writes:

“I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Today, Levine Museum begins hosting an artistic response exhibit that bears the title of "Network of Mutuality: 50 Years Post-Birmingham," as an homage to Dr. King's words. The exhibit looks forward to the state of civil rights today; 50 years later. However, in 1963, as a direct result of this letter, one month after his arrest, groups of school children committed their bodies for civil disobedience.

The Children’s March of May 1963, was a symbolic and awful moment in Civil Rights history. Eugene “Bull” Connor, then the Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, let loose his anger in the form of dogs and the dousing of the children with powerful fire hoses. Televised nightly on the news, the callous nature of his violence immediately shook the world including a statement by President John F. Kennedy saying this “made me sick to my stomach.”

Dr. King’s statement about the inter-relatedness of all people resonated in the reactions to images from Birmingham.



Police turned attack dogs and fire hoses on Birmingham city
protesters, many of them children and teens in May of 1963.
The horrific images were captured by news cameras and
covered all over the world.



Other dates important to the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 included: 

·         May 29-31, after the threat of protest from  Reginald Hawkins, Charlotte business and government leaders stage biracial eat-ins to desegregate dining in Charlotte’s leading restaurants

·         June 11: Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood, two black students, from enrolling in the University of Alabama. President Kennedy orders him aside with federal integration orders and later appears on television condemning segregation and discrimination while expressing his intent to submit a new Civil Rights Bill.

·         June 12: Medgar Evers, NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, is murdered outside his home. No one is convicted until 30 years later.

·         On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people all of them very different in many ways gathered for one singular cause: equality. Whether it was equality in schools or in the workplace the overarching theme was the liberation of colored folk from the fetters of Jim Crow.  Dr. King, after his tumultuous year, came to Washington DC with his “I Have a Dream Speech” prepared. The speech, along with many others in history, has stood the test of time.

·         September 15 marks one of the most somber events of the Civil Rights Movement when an average Sunday turned for the worst. A bomb was placed in the foundation of the 16^th Street Baptist Church and the explosion left four little girls dead.  Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were killed on that infamous day. The church had been a hotbed of meeting grounds during the 1960’s which was why it was a prime location for the firebomb.

·         A final major event of 1963 was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was then a big proponent of the passage of a civil rights bill.  He was murdered on November 22^nd while in Dallas, Texas, on a presidential campaign visit.  After his assassination his plan of passing a civil rights legislation was continued and finally enacted by Lyndon B. Johnson, first with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 then by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The former outlaws the discrimination in schools and the workplace that ran rampant during the era of Jim Crow and the latter prohibited the discrimination at the polls.

As we look back at the events of 1963, they leave room to consider how our issues “then” coincide with issues “now.” 

Are we living in a post-racial society? 

Is there no more discrimination in schools? At the polls?

Is “Jim Crow” really gone?

For some artists’ answers to these questions, come view the exhibit Network of Mutuality: 50 Years Post-Birmingham among other exhibits, opening today at Levine Museum.

Share your thoughts with us on Facebook, and on Twitter @LevineMuseum.  Follow along with the hashtag #DestinationFreedom

Today there will also be a commemorative march in Washington, DC honoring the landmark March on Washington which took place on August 28, 1963.