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Kelly Ingram Park and the 16th Street Baptist Church constitute Birmingham's Civil Rights District. Kelly Ingram Park is the locale of a number of monuments and art objects celebrating the Civil Rights Movement. |
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Kelly Ingram Park and the 16th Street Baptist Church constitute Birmingham's Civil Rights District. Kelly Ingram Park is the locale of a number of monuments and art objects celebrating the Civil Rights Movement. |
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Kelly Ingram Park memorializes racial
"reconciliation" as well as the "revolution" in
civil rights of the 1960s.
A statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., stands just beyond the park entrance. |
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The statue of Rev. King memorializes his role in the Birmingham demonstrations for racial
integration. He was the head of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of African-American
religious leaders fighting to end segregation in the South.
Martin Luther King, Jr., opposed Birmingham police chief T. Eugene "Bull" Connor, who ordered police and fire personnel to break up the civil rights demonstrations. |
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"Bull" Connor ordered the fire department to turn high-pressure water hoses on the civil rights protesters. The stream of pressure from one of these "water cannons" was powerful enough to strip the bark off trees. In some cases the power of the water knocked over black demonstrators and washed them down the street. This water cannon is part of a sculpture in Kelly Ingram Park. |