Steel Magnolia: Out of the South’s civil rights struggle, resilient Birmingham blossoms anew
by Traci Bratton
Once so committed to segregation that it was called America’s Johannesburg, Birmingham has loomed large in my consciousness. Throughout my Connecticut childhood, its name served as code for racial intolerance. Now, five decades after the civil rights movement’s most galvanizing events—Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” the Children’s Crusade, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church—I’ve come down to see how much has changed.