Birmingham, Alabama

Through the agency of a friend of a friend, we have been able enjoy the warm Christian hospitality of John and Anne-Marie, in Birmingham, Alabama. We started the day after a restful night in their house (left) , with a tour of the local area, including the high school where there two younger teenage children go (there were over three hundred cars in the school students car park), and the nearby Samford University, a baptist institution of over 4,000 students, where John and Anne-Marie met.

It is a beautiful campus, with large sweeping lawns, and lots of mature trees - indeed, the whole city of Birmingham is very green, aided by the warm and wet southern climate (twice the annual rainfall of London, and much hotter)..

 In the city of Birmingham itself our first stop was the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a wonderful museum telling the whole story of the civil rights movement in a very clear and compelling way.

Across the road from the Institute is the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the scene of one of the great tragedies in the struggle for human rights, when on Sunday 15th September 1963 white racists exploded a bomb beneath the front steps of the church which killed four young girls and injured 22 others.

With wonderful hospitality we were welcomed and showed around the building of this church which is still a very live and thriving community.

There are many mementos of the four girls including in the main sanctuary (above) and in this line drawing displayed in the church basement:

Across the road from the church and the Civil Rights movement there is a further memorial of those terrible events of September 1963 in a sculpture entitled: 'A Love That Forgives:'

It is well done and well said. It is good that these things are being remembered in Birmingham, Alabama.