I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, during the infamous year of 1963, for 17 years before that, and for three years after.
That year is especially seared in the conscience of the world as well as my own. I didn’t know it when the year began, but that September would be the only time I ever heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in person.
Here in 2023, as this Easter season passes and our community reflects on the 60th anniversary of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I think back to how Gov. Wallace began 1963 declaring, “… segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In early April sit-ins began in earnest. Eight moderate white clergy write King disapproving of his leadership advising more patience and more waiting. King leads a march and is arrested and put in solitary confinement where he writes his famous “Letter.” In early May, white police direct snarling dogs and hard blasts of water from fire hoses against Black children who have joined the struggle for rights and freedom. The motel where Dr. King stayed is bombed along with his brother’s house. Sit-ins continue, in the summer plans are made to desegregate the schools. Arson and bombings continue.
Then, on September 15, the Klan bombs the 16th Street Baptist Church and kills four young girls. Dr. King returns to Birmingham to speak at the funeral for three of the girls. The pall of terror over the city is smothering.
I was one of a small group of whites who went to the funeral. The FBI was taking down license plate numbers. Thousands of people crowded outside. Arriving very early, I had gotten a seat inside. Surrounded by sorrow and disbelief, I heard Dr. King’s unmistakable voice but remember not a word he said. I think my mind was too consumed with fear and chaos. My toddler was at home with his father. Was there to be only an ugly, unjust future?
I recently relistened to King’s eulogy which began, “These children — unoffending, innocent and beautiful — were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”
I learned that my body had not forgotten.
Chatham resident Marcia E. Herman-Giddens is a retired medical educator and researcher and author of the recently-released memoir, “Unloose My Heart: A Personal Reckoning with the Twisted Roots of My Southern Family Tree.”
Her book, she says, was written “to ease my haunting and satisfy my growing need to uncover the forgotten and secreted past from which I came.”