Touring_History

The Birmingham News, March 4, 2001

Touring history                                          Dignitaries join                                                                            Civil Rights
Pilgrimate in historic district
By Greg Garrison, News staff writer

   The Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage brought about 100 dignitaries to Birmingham's historic district Saturday to tour, with the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and U.S. Rep. John Lewis offering historical commentary.
   About 20 members of Congress, their staffs, clergy, and some students from Washington, D.C., toured kelly Ingram Park and Sixteenth Street Baptist church with Shuttlesworth and Lewis. "They can walk through recent history, learn and be inspired," Lewis said.
   Shuttlesworth spoke through a bullhorn as he stopped at statues in the park and described the 1963 demonstrations. "These young people helped us win the vicotry," he said a tthe monument to children's role in the demonstratoins. "Without them, we never would have filled the jails."
   Filling up the Birmingham jail and overburdening the system helped defeat segregationist public safety commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor," he said.
   At the statue depicting the use of fire hoses against protesters, Shuttlesworth recalled the force of being hit by a blast. "Bark was flying off that tree," he said. "it was raw and utter brutality."
   In front of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Bettie Fikes, introduced by Lewis as the "Songbird of Selma," sang, "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," and got a rousing ovation from the members of Congress.
   At Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Carolyn McKinstry described the bombing that killed four little girls who were her fellow church members on Sept 15, 1963.
   "It's really quite profound," said U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California, as the group left on its way to Montgomery to visit the Rosa Parks Museum. The congressional delegation was set to take aprt in a re-enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma today at 2 p.m.
   "This has been very moving to me," said Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a Navy chaplain active in the Faith and Politics Institute, which sponsored the civil rights pilgrimage. He said he was impressed with how Birmingham had used its history to move forward. U.S. Rep. Earl Hilliard, D-Birmingham, said that he hopes to get President Bush to take part in the Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage in 2003.

US. Rep John Lewis, D-Georgia, along with renowned civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, lays a wreath at the steps of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. They are surrounded by a delegation including U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., left, and U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., center.