Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Historical past Path excursions returning in July

The Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Trail, which opened in June 2019, is hoping to celebrate the start of its third year with an expansion of tours, some of which have been cleared up by the presence of foot soldiers who highlight the beating, ridicule and legal harassment took upon themselves to build a better future for all.

The tours had run from the trail’s opening date as both hiking and horseback riding experiences, led by civil rights activists, educators, and others who helped share the lesser-known stories of Tuscaloosa until the 2020 pandemic broke out.

But on Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a bill making June thenth, celebrated on Saturday, a federal holiday; Sunday is the first official summer day; and the fully vaccinated are comfortable attending public events again, so Civil Rights History Task Force co-chairs Tim Lewis and Scott Bridges expect interest in the tours to return and rise.

“We actually have a 24-passenger bus that was purchased before the pandemic,” said Lewis, who was founded by TALA Professional Services. “Once things are a little more open, we’ll have people back there to talk about Tuscaloosa’s role in the civil rights movement.”

Those interested in the 18-stop tour can fill out the form at www.civilrightstuscaloosa.org/guided-tours, he said.

“We’re already getting demand and we’re planning to start in July,” said Lewis.

Even long-time residents often do not know the history of the Druid City, partly because Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham drew more from the national press, and partly out of personal pain and shame, which led to reluctance.

Tuscaloosa suffered its vicious Bloody Tuesday on June 9, 1964, almost a year before Selma’s Bloody Sunday. Of the more than 500 people who had gathered at the First African Baptist Church to march to what was then a new Tuscaloosa County courthouse to protest Jim Crow’s signage, 94 were arrested. Protesters, including numerous children who skipped school among adults, were beaten, shocked and poisoned with tear gas in their own sanctuary, 33 of them horrific enough to be hospitalized.

Tuscaloosa saw sit-ins, boycotts and peaceful demonstrations that sometimes turned ugly because law enforcement was poorly handled or completely collapsed, like the white mob that attacked a group of black moviegoers outside the downtown Druid Theater on July 8, 1964 . who had been separated just six days earlier before the Civil Rights Act was passed.

On the University of Alabama campus, there have been infamous, temporarily successful attempts to block integration, most notably Governor Wallace’s booth in the school doorway, but also lesser-known events such as the flagpole mob on February 4, 1956, when 1,000 people hit from UA marched downtown singing “Dixie” to protest Autherine Lucy’s attempts to integrate the school.

But the Civil Rights History Trail begins even further back than it did in the 1950s and 60s, in Tuscaloosa’s creation, its 20-year status as the capital of Alabama, and the years before and after the Civil War. Even as a city in the south that is sometimes viewed as somewhat progressive, Tuscaloosa was not free from the stench of slavery and the horrors that often followed rebuilding. At least eight black Tuscaloosans were lynched in racially motivated murders after the civil war. More than a century after the Civil War, the United Klans of America, housed in a three-room suite on the fourth floor of the Alston Building in Tuscaloosa, was bankrupted by a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1981 for the lynching of a Mobile man was built around.

But Tuscaloosa also has civil rights heroes, like the Rev. TY Rogers Jr., who was handpicked by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to lead the local movement from the pulpit of the First African Baptist, home to mass rallies designed to inspire to educate and improve life.

Despite being born into slavery, Shandy Wesley Jones became the state’s first black lawmaker and a successful preacher and businessman in Tuscaloosa before being hunted down by the KKK and forced to move to Mobile during the rebuilding of the KKK.

Tuscaloosa News editor and publisher Buford Boone won the 1957 Pulitzer for editorial writing for his front page column “What a Price for Peace” denouncing the actions of those facing Lucy.

Even after he was denied law school when UA discovered he was black, Paul R. Jones generously donated his extensive art collection to the college, which was located in downtown Tuscaloosa as the Paul R. Jones Museum in 2308 Sixth St.

From his hair salon on what is now TY Rogers Jr. Avenue, Rev. Thomas Linton would sometimes work behind the scenes, taking Lucy into his shop to help clean up groceries and other junk pelted at by racists who tried theirs Blocking access to UA and assisting Bloody Tuesday victims with hospital care and bail money. He was also a front man, reporting directly to US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

These and other stories can be told on the Civil Rights History Trail tours, some of which are aided by foot soldiers who were young men on Bloody Tuesday, like Danny Steele and Maxie Thomas, who were so cruelly beaten in First African Baptist he almost lost an eye.

And it is important that these stories be told and retold, said John Diggie, repeating Linton’s words so that progress is not lost. Diggie visited and interviewed Linton many times while researching his upcoming book, Bloody Tuesday: Civil Rights History and Memory in Tuscaloosa. Diggie, an associate professor of history at the UA and director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South, met foot soldiers through Linton, who spoke eloquently of their pain.

“(One) told me when it rains really well he can feel the cattle on his legs,” said Diggie.

Others like Bridges, who are blessed with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Tuscaloosa, can ride on the tours that stop and have people wander around some landmarks like the ruins of the government building in Capitol Park or the First African Baptist.

For all this knowledge and historical resources available, many still do not know why the Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Task Force is building a learning center and museum, possibly on or on some of these historical sites. The continued focus could help re-center Tuscaloosa’s place in history alongside that of Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery.

“These kinds of things will make our community a better community educationally, better spiritually, and better economically,” said Bridges.

The challenge continues to spread, said Lewis, from friend to friend, to family and others.

“Unfortunately, Tuscaloosa’s role in the civil rights movement, those unsung heroes and untold stories, has been hidden for too many years,” he said.

“We need to bring these stories to the public so we can learn from our history and do better in our future.”

More information is available on the website www.civilrightstuscaloosa.org.