Summer in Birmingham

America is less a country than it is a concept.  Having lived and traveled extensively through the country, I saw quite a bit of it, and no two parts are alike.  People identify more with the towns they grew up in than they do the country or even the state they reside in.  For political purposes, pundits like to divide the country into red and  blue states, depending on whether they are Republican or Democratic led, but fact is there are many divisions within the states themselves.  Having grown up in Northwest Florida, the political temperament is markedly different in the "panhandle" than it is in the peninsula of the state, and even within the panhandle you see major differences between cities like Tallahassee and Panama City.  So, when someone asks me what it is like in America, I say which part?

Alabama is considered a deep red state.  It has voted Republican for decades and prides itself on its conservative nature.  However, I spent a summer in Birmingham documenting the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1993.  It was a straight shot along Highway 331 and Interstate 25 from Santa Rosa Beach.   I was part of a large Historic American Buildings and Engineering Survey (HABS/HAER) group that was doing measured drawings and historic reports on several buildings in the city, including the old Rickwood Field and several iron mining sites around the city.  I would be leading the church team. HABS had rented space in an old cast iron building from Auburn University's urban architectural branch, which was away for the summer.  It was up to us individually to find room and board.  I located a Victorian house in the Five Points area that had three or four bedrooms and moved in with four of the women on the team, as everyone else had broken up into pairs or found places on their own.  Given how big the house was it soon became the center of activities, with one guy asking if he could use the second floor glazed porch as his art studio.

The bearded man who rented the house to us was a converted Hindu who had a vegetarian cafe nearby.  He had grown up in Alabama and spoke with a thick Southern drawl.  Very friendly guy who thought it was pretty cool we were documenting all these historic sites and gave us a special rate, along with coupons to eat at his cafe  He said he had a hard time renting in summer anyway, as all the students had gone home.  University of Alabama at Birmingham stretched across the city with a big medical school nearby. The area was alive with quirky little places.  It didn't feel at all like a Southern city, at least not one any of us imagined.  There were all sorts of music venues.  You could go see live music almost any night.  The big event that summer was City Stages, when the city hosted a wide variety of bands from all over the world on various stages spread across downtown for three days.

Birmingham had come a long way from being a notorious racist city in the 1960s, when Bull Connor ruled with an iron fist.  The epicenter of the Civil Rights movement was the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where four girls died from a bomb planted by a white supremacist in the basement in 1963.  This not only galvanized the Black community, but the whole nation.  Americans were shocked, even moreso than Bull Connor infamously using dogs and water canons on protesters.  The Civil Rights Act was passed the next year.  

The church was presided over by a young dynamic reverend who looked a little like Martin Luther King Jr.  He was glad to see the church getting attention again, not just for its role in the Civil Rights movement but because it had been one of the earliest churches to be designed and built by a Black architect and construction company in 1910.  The parishioners took great pride in their church with its congregational hall and large mezzanine wrapping around it.  In its heyday, a thousand or more persons packed into the church. Today it was a few hundred on any given Sunday.

Two of the persons on our team were foreign exchange interns from Lithuania and Slovakia.  I thought it would be fun to take Daina and Csilla to a baseball game.  The Barons no longer played at Rickwood, but some field outside the city.  At the seventh inning stretch, I saw Bob Feller autographing baseballs in one of the corridors.  He was in a grumpy mood, complaining that kids got more money trading baseball cards today than he ever did as a player.  I asked him if he wouldn't mind signing two balls, which I gave to Daina and Csilla.  They weren't quite sure what to make of them.  Bob Feller didn't mean anything to them, but they appreciated the gesture.

They both loved the city.  Daina especially so.  She had found a little chocolate shop around the corner from our studio that she frequented so much the clerk began giving her free samples, which she shared with us.  She couldn't imagine how divisive this city once was.  Everyone is so friendly, she said.  

When it came time to measure the towers of the church from the outside, I called the fire department and asked if they wouldn't mind helping us.  The next day they came over with their cherry picker and hoisted two of us up to the upper reaches of the belfry so that we could measure the cornice profile and trim around the windows.  People gathered around wondering if there was anything wrong, given the history of the church, but the firemen chatted with the locals and told them about what we were doing.  Reverend Hamlin came out and soon it was a big friendly gathering.

Daina and I became quite close that summer.  I would take her to other places around Alabama on the weekends, including the Talladega National Forest that wasn't very far from Birmngham.  We found a little stream to wade in and an old wood covered bridge that was literally suspended in mid air, as the river had carved out the valley over the years.  On another trip we went to see the Fluxus exhibit at the art gallery in Montgomery and took time to visit the Civil Rights markers as well.  Fluxus had been the creation of two Lithuanian artists who had emigrated to New York and became immersed in the experimental art scene of the 1970s.  

We tried not to let our romance interfere with our work.  We would spend evenings out on the screen porch listening to the crickets chirp as I massaged her feet stretched across my lap.  The fateful moment came at a Michelle Shocked concert in a tight little bar, where she couldn't see the stage with all the people in front of her.  So, I hoisted her up on my shoulders so that she could get a better view.  The feeling was electric, and I'm fortunate to say it still is.

Nevertheless, we had a project to complete and time was running short.  We rushed to finish the drawings.  The student historian was dragging on her report, not wanting to give me a summary to put on the title sheet.  It had to be done with a Leroy lettering set, as everything was hand drawn.  Finally, I took it upon myself to write a summary, which had to be proofed by the woman who had organized the recording team, determined that nothing controversial was said.  She was already upset that I showed a brick under the stipple drawing of the stained-glass window donated by the People of Wales in the wake of the bombing.  The old window had been blown out.  That's part of the history, I had said.

Marjorie Rabbit, as we all called her, was the head of the Birmingham Historical Society, and had a very sober view when it came to interpreting history.  All the historians had clashed with her, especially over labor history, and we finally had to call in the Chief of HABS to settle the disputes that arose.  In Marjorie's mind, the Civil Rights movement should be dimmed and the 19th and early 20th century history stressed, but then Birmingham had long lived in the shadow of the Antebellum South, albeit an industrial city, with racism pervasive throughout its history. Even the Vulcan statue, initially nude, had to be covered with an apron as white folks were offended by it.  Now, the same folks lived outside the city in suburban Homewood, and were subjected to his posterior.  Hence the expression, "Moon over Homewood."  The wounds were still there.

The other teams rushed to complete their drawings as well.  It was a mad house in the studio the last few evenings, bringing in boxes of pizza and dozens of Krispy Kreme donuts, as well as pots of coffee to keep us going through the night.  Everything complete, we all came together for a big dinner at a local steak house and presented our drawings and report to the historical society at a big gala the next day.  It had been one of the largest joint HABS/HAER efforts since the Works Progress Administration days of the 1930s, when the two organizations were set up, and everyone seemed happy with the work we did as a group.

You never know what you will find in America.  This is what makes if fun to travel through, and why it continues to be a huge draw to people the world over.  Every locale has its own special history, its own origin myths and its own character.  It is also why the country has such a hard time pulling together.  People see America through the prism of their own local sense of history, even when it has evolved like it has in Birmingham.  So, I'm always taken a little aback when people judge the nation by the actions of one part of the country, as if it is a reflection of the whole.  Nothing could be further from the case.  Even in the Deep South you find an incredible diversity, and shouldn't be quick to rush to judgement.