Kelly Ingram Park, 500 17th Street North, Birmingham

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AL-6. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

500 Street North , Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama Bound on the north by 6th Avenue North, on the east by street North, on the south by 5th Avenue North, on the west by Street North and the Civil Rights Institute (Center of Kelly Ingram Park, Google Earth,

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AL-6. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

In Birmingham, Alabama s Kelly Ingram Park was far from the peaceful, verdant oasis and learning experience it is today. The park, just a few blocks from the city center, became the meeting place for non-violent marches lead by Martin Luther King. Those marchers were dispersed with violent attacks from the city police s fire hoses and German Shepard dogs which ignited racial unrest in early May of that year. The simmering pot of American race relations boiled over to the extent that four months later a bomb, planted at the Street Baptist church on the park s NW corner, split open a calm Sunday morning, killing four young girls and injuring nearly two dozen others.

The redesign of the park in the and the addition of the Civil Rights Institute across Street North were created to document and memorialize those events. The park remains the main place for diversity protests and other peaceful expression of opinion in Birmingham today. Description: The existing one block area of Kelly Ingram Park in was a downtown waste land full of crime and drug trading until the first Black Mayor raised the money to build the Civil Rights Institute, renovate the Street Baptist Church and redevelop the park. Extensive historic research and focus groups helped determine how the park would complement the Institute. Exhibits were included to educate future generations on the past.

The mature trees were preserved because of their historic significance: protesters had clung to them for protection from the high-powered fire hoses. The existing sculpture of prominent black citizens were incorporated into the new design. The existing sidewalks were a quadripartite layout of the one-square-block park, but the current plan rotated the cross-shaped walks creating diagonal walks reflecting figurative lines of marchers crossing against the social tide. The diagonal layout also provides direct sight lines to the Institute and the Church on the northwest corner of the park. At the parks center, where the walks intersect, brimming basins fill the arced segments with a circular walk. Materials were chosen to reinforce historical context.

For example, at each corner of the park, visitors enter through low, rusticated limestone walls that recall cornerstones of old Birmingham KELLY INGRAM PARK HALS NO. AL-6 PAGE 2 churches. On the entry wall is inscribed Mayor Arrington s motto capturing the spirit of the District he envisioned: A Place of Revolution and Reconciliation. The diagonal walks intersect with a bluestone circular walk referred to as the Freedom Walk . Mayor Arrington selected the images that would be commemorated and become the sculpture in the park. The current condition has been well preserved and after President Obama designated the area a National monument repairs were made by the city parks department.

History: Originally included on a Birmingham City map along racial boundaries the West End Park was planned as an amenity for this area. The park was eventually renamed Kelly Ingram Park after the first American sailor killed in World War One. In Birmingham s first black elected Mayor, Richard Arrington, had the vision to designate a Civil Rights District that provided for commemoration, reconciliation and the celebration of freedom for millions of visitors from all over the world. The horrific acts that took place on this hallowed ground in the s were memorialized to remind us and future generations that all races deserve equal rights.

Parallel with the design of the new Civil Rights Institute, Kelly Ingram Park and the two-block Civil Rights District were included in the design to compliment and commemorate the civil rights marches that occurred in this place in Grover and Harrison, the Landscape Architect, worked as the prime consultant to the Mayor and a number of committees, including the Task Force which became the Client. This committee included the heads of the city departments i.e., city planner, engineers, neighborhood leaders and mayor s office. Also, a committee was formed to include the Veterans that actually attended the marches and were the unsung foot soldiers in the s. The Landscape Architect included on her design team historians, architects, civil, structural, mechanical and lighting engineers.

The project required a design solution that respected the historical value of one of Birmingham s three original downtown parks and as the hallowed ground where the Civil Rights marches took place. The scope of this project was to renovate the District s existing city park, Kelly Ingram Park , which was centrally located within this two-block area, called the Civil Rights District. The project s design philosophy was that if Birmingham served as the starting point for a civil rights revolution, it could also be celebrated as a catalyst for equality and freedom throughout the world.

This setting would afford quiet contemplation of where our Nation has been over the last 50 years, and where it is now on its journey toward individual freedom along with the realization of how much of the journey is still up to each individual.

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AL-6. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Birmingham Civil Rights Historic District - National Register of Historic Places, NRIS Nomination Documentation, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Sixth Avenue North, Birmingham, Jefferson County, AL. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS AL-898, Reproduction number [HABS ALA,37-BIRM,33-]. https://tile.loc.gov/storage- KELLY INGRAM PARK HALS NO. AL-6 PAGE 3

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AL-6. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Lois Silliman Mash, Lois Harrison at the time of the project design. Project manager and lead landscape architect with her mother Edah Grover. July 26, Entry HALS Challenge: Historic Black Landscapes Historic Corner: Pictured pre-renovation in the southeast corner of the park where police blasted protestors with firehouses. A sculpture of Reverend Martin Luther King, added to the park prior to the renovation, anchors a modest, mundane walkway. (Lois Mash, KELLY INGRAM PARK HALS NO.

AL-6 PAGE 4 Today s park: King s figure returned to prominance after the sculpture was removed, renovated and placed among the new walks and landscape (Lois Mash) Connections: Kneeling Ministers , a sculpture by Raymond Kasky, symbolically bows along the axis to the Street Baptist Church in the distance, linking the park and the Church visually as well as symbolically. (Lois Mash)