On Dynamite Hill

ON DYNAMITE HILL

The American South has many places worthy of historical commemoration and Alabama has its share of them.  I had thought that my first visit to such a site would be in Montgomery, the state capitol.  It was only after I got back that I remembered that I lived on one of them and so I want to write about it first.

My neighborhood in Birmingham was once on the front lines in the long struggle for civil rights in the United States.  Many of those who lived on Center Street and the streets that crossed and flanked it took part in fighting for voting rights, ending racial segregation, and working for “justice for all.”  Those who did so often paid a high price for their bravery.

When people think of the civil rights struggle in America, without a doubt the first name to come to mind is Martin Luther King, Jr.  He started his campaign against racism in Montgomery in 1955 but no city had a bigger role in the movement than Birmingham and my family and neighbors were prominent in the fight.  Some took part in the freedom marches.  Others got involved in state and national politics to work for change.  Still others followed the words and example of Henry David Thoreau and engaged in acts of civil disobedience.  The reaction from the powers-that-were in those days was swift, decisive, violent and often even murderous.

My neighborhood in Birmingham’s Smithfield community came to be called “Dynamite Hill”.  Starting at the intersection of Center Street and Eighth Avenue, North the ground steadily rises, reaching a crest on Eleventh Court, North.  This area was home to some of Birmingham’s civil rights leaders, whose activities, workplaces and addresses were all a matter of public record.  So when these people began “agitating” and “stirring up trouble” in the view of the authorities, it wasn’t long before Birmingham’s political elite denounced them.  When denunciation didn’t make them back down, harsher actions were taken.

The notorious Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization founded in 1868, got involved.  First they used their time-honored act of terrorism:  slipping onto people’s property at night, erecting a wooden cross and then setting it alight.  The burning cross was the trademark of the Klan and it had been used for decades to threaten and intimidate anyone—black and white—who wanted to change the established order.

The cross burnings only made civil rights leaders bolder.  They refused to end their activities.  So the Klan took to planting bombs on their property.  As far as I can remember, nobody was killed but damage to homes and property was extensive.  So many homes and buildings were bombed that the area was called “Dynamite Hill”.  But the Klan didn’t confine its attacks to Dynamite Hill.  Many more homes, businesses and even churches were targeted giving the city the ugly nickname of “Bombingham”.

The climax of this terrorist campaign came in 1963, probably the most tumultuous year for the civil rights movement in Birmingham.  That year saw the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday, 15 September.  The blast killed four girls attending Sunday school that morning.  In another instance, peaceful demonstrators who demanded the right to vote were set upon with water cannons and fierce attack dogs in Kelly Ingram Park.  Many were beaten and jailed regardless of age or sex.  While all this was happening, Birmingham’s civic and political leaders did nothing to stop the violence or punish those who carried it out.  Indeed, many of them encouraged it, hoping that they could coerce any and all who wanted to change the established order of things into compliant silence.

Among the various events to occur then, the city’s police commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, decided to pay a personal visit to Smithfield; but he had no intention of talking to its residents or engaging in any kind of peaceful dialogue.  Connor somehow got hold of an old army tank and lumbered up Dynamite Hill accompanied by a retinue of armed police officers and attack dogs.  Connor positioned himself in the turret, glaring hatred at my neighbors, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  He swiveled the gun around, pointing it at homes and shouting hate speech.

Far from running and hiding in fear, the neighborhood defiantly turned out in force to watch Connor roll past.  Nobody responded to his actions but looked on silently as he rumbled by.  One of my aunts told me later that while she wasn’t scared, she did wonder how somebody could have that much hatred in his heart.  My immediate family did not witness Connor’s tank ride because my father was in the Army and serving in Okinawa, but my parents anxiously watched these events from afar as they unfolded in their hometown.

While Bull Connor failed to end the civil rights movement in Birmingham, black residents still had to take precautions to protect themselves.  One of my neighbors recalled one of the measures families took to prevent tragedies.  It was common for the Klan to wait until nightfall and then ride through black neighborhoods and engage in drive-by shootings.  So that meant nobody slept in bedrooms which faced the street, choosing instead to put their beds in a house’s back rooms just in case there was an attack.

In 1973, Bull Connor died a broken, bitter and lonely man.  His fall from grace was complete as Alabama decided to embrace justice and equality, ending segregation, voter disenfranchisement, and other evils.  In his heyday, Bull Connor was arguably the most powerful man in Alabama.  When he died, the state’s political establishment, including George Wallace, the governor who was most energetic in his enforcement of the old segregation laws, boycotted his funeral.

On Good Friday, I went for a walk on the slopes of Dynamite Hill.  I didn’t hear the crackling flames of burning crosses or the boom of exploding bombs.  Instead there was the noise of traffic on the busy Interstate highway beneath the Center Street viaduct and melodious birdsong in the air.  Roses, sweet clover, honeysuckle and other flowers swayed in the breeze and wafted their scents to my thankful nose.  The old civil rights warriors have passed away now although their houses still proudly stand, monuments to the history which occurred nearly a half-century ago.  The neighborhood was getting ready for Easter, reposing in a well-earned peace.

But that peace must not be taken for granted.  The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, something that is easy to relax when there is no clear and present danger to threaten it.  There are still those of various persuasions who would deny liberty to others and they must be opposed.  That is true not just in Alabama, but many other places in the world.

For now, I could enjoy another glorious spring day in the Deep South.  I have been back less than a month and I am allowing myself to gradually assimilate.  Life is profoundly different here than in the Rocky Mountain West, Good Friday’s news about blizzard conditions in Idaho and Montana being just another reminder of this.  Today I chose to remember what happened on Dynamite Hill and rejoice that the courage of my family and neighbors has made life better for all of us.