Birmingham: The Magic City

This is Katie blogging for Brandi's small group.

We spent most of the morning exploring the National Civil Rights Museum. Best. Museum. Ever. I can promise you that I have never willingly spent 3 hours in a museum until today. The museum started at the "beginning" of the civil rights movement and took us all the way to present day. What I enjoyed most was that there were so many areas in which we could stop and watch actual video footage of what happened during the Movement. The museum overlooked the park in Birmingham where children were hosed down with high-pressure water hoses and bitten by police dogs all under the order of the city's government. Looking out of the museum windows onto the square where all that injustice happened caused me to pause for a moment and realize that those terrible things did not happen all that long ago. That people are still hurting from things that happened in our country 50 or 60 years ago.

We went across the street to Sixteenth St. Baptist Church, where 4 young black girls were killed when a bomb was detonated under the church. We read the eulogy that MLK JR read for those girls and these are some things that really stuck out to me:
"These children -- unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-- were the victims of one the vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And this afternoon they have something to say to each of us in their death...They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution...They say to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream."

Have I ever had to work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream like those girls did? Like their families had to? Would I have the courage to walk through the streets of Birmingham knowing that I was going to be hurt or killed for a cause that I knew was right?