The 1963 Campaign led by civil rights activists in Birmingham, Alabama (which at the time was one of the most racially divided cities in the U.S.) culminated in a number of widely publicized confrontations between young black students and white civic authorities, mostly through water hoses and police dogs, that ultimately led to changes in the city’s discrimination laws. In Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park, north of the Baptist church where a KKK bomb killed four young African-American girls in 1963, are commemorative statues of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth as well as other heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, but there are also several “interactive” installations created by artist James Drake that flank a circular “Freedom Walk”. They bring the visitor inside the portrayals of terror and sorrow of the 1963 confrontations. Erected in 1991, the work depicts snarling police dogs made of scrap iron leaping inward from two walls on either side of the park’s walkway. Visitors can stand between and try to imagine the terror when civil rights marchers were assaulted with the canines. There are also water cannons that point toward a sculpture of two cowering protesters called “Firehosing of Demonstrators”. Also in the park is “Children’s March”, a pair of statues of a boy and girl behind bars, over the words “We ain’t afraid of your jail,” memorializing a period in history when the city was known as “Bombingham”. The last of Drake’s works along the park’s Freedom Walk depicts a young black man being attacked by a police officer and his dog. It’s called “Foot Soldier Tribute” and is dedicated to all who struggled with “gallantry, courage and great bravery” in the Civil Rights Movement.
Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park
