Civil Rights
A New Leader for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Tuesday Birmingham will mark the 52 anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing which killed 4 girls and helped galvanize support for passage of the Civil Rights Act. For staff at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, they’ll note this anniversary under new leadership. Andrea Taylor began as the new president and CEO of the institute last week.
Selma Civil Rights Leader Remembers Amelia Boynton Robinson
Amelia Boynton Robinson, a civil rights activist who helped lead the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, died Wednesday. She was 104. Boynton Robinson began her activist career in the 1930 championing voting and property rights for blacks in rural Alabama. In the 1960s, her Selma home became the headquarters for the civil rights movement there. And in 1964, she became the first black woman to run for Congress in Alabama. Longtime Selma civil rights leader Rev. F.D. Reese spoke to WBHM’s Andrew Yeager about his memories of Amelia Boynton Robinson.
Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray On Fighting George Wallace And Segregation
In 1957, on the heals of his successful lawsuit that ended the Montgomery Bus Boycott, civil rights attorney Fred Gray represented a group of African American voters from Tuskegee who were shut out of voting in local elections when the Alabama Legislature re-drew the city limits in such a way as to remove them from the city. Gray sued the State in Federal Court. Almost four years later, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that race-based gerrymandering was unconstitutional.
Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray Reflects on Montgomery Bus Boycott
Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the law that abolished literacy tests and other tools designed to keep black people from voting. The momentum for Selma and the civil rights victories of 1965 started ten years earlier with the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. Tuskegee civil rights lawyer Fred Gray was one of the forces behind that boycott. For WBHM, Greg Bass recently spoke with Gray about the bus boycott, and his extraordinary career. Gray went on to represent the Selma Marchers, Martin Luther King and a seamstress named Rosa Parks.
Kyle Whitmire: Selma Boos Bentley and Remembering Gene Edelman
Thousands of people gathered in Selma last weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery. President Barack Obama spoke, along with Georgia Congressman John Lewis and Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. But, as Alabama Media Group Political commentator Kyle Whitmire explains, Bentley's reception was less than warm. Whitmire also talks Gene "The Bean Counter" Edelman and Alabama education.
