Sixty years ago, on Palm Sunday, three Black pastors led a march from Birmingham’s St. Paul United Methodist Church toward City Hall to protest the Jim Crow segregation laws and support racial equality and human rights. Police arrested 26 people and used police dogs to disperse Black onlookers.
On April 1, an interracial group of citizens gathered at St. Paul to recreate the historic march, which was part of the organized campaign in 1963 to dismantle Birmingham’s unjust system of racial separation.
Last Saturday’s event included “Poetry in the Park,” starting from the Three Kneeling Ministers sculpture in Kelly Ingram Park, where some of the most violent clashes with police took place during the 1963 campaign. The sculpture commemorates when the local ministers leading the march, John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith Jr., and A.D. King, brother of Martin Luther King Jr., knelt to pray on the sidewalk in front of segregationist Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor. More than 1,000 people marched that day.
The recent event drew about 100 people, as marchers heard from poets at the sculpture and at other locations around the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument site. Ashley M. Jones, Alabama’s Poet Laureate, joined the events that included a program at St. Paul, as well as music, children’s activities, and food trucks.
Supporters of the event included St. Paul United Methodist Church, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Methodist Foundation of North Alabama, Greater Birmingham Ministries, Magic City Poetry Festival, Scrollworks Music School, and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.
“Protests in April and May 1963, such as the Palm Sunday March, which departed from St. Paul United Methodist Church, elevated civil rights from a Southern issue to a pressing national issue,” said Kathryn Gardiner, park ranger at the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. “It was an honor to commemorate the elders and ancestors who took a stand, alongside our many community partners.”
Rev. Richard Lane Stryker III, pastor at St. Paul, said the event was a great success, combining a commemoration of important civil rights history with inspirational messages, poetry, and music.
“Hopefully, through the poetry and the program, we can inspire a new generation of changemakers,” Stryker said.
Learn more about the three kneeling ministers and the sculpture at Kelly Ingram Park here.
Republished with the permission of The Alabama NewsCenter.
