For the second year in a row, a group from the Diocese of Newark has undertaken a powerful pilgrimage through Alabama, retracing the footsteps of history and the brave souls who fought for civil rights. Updates from the Pilgrims will be posted here. View their photo gallery.
Friday, April 24
Thursday offered us a tour of Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park where, in 1963, on the day before Palm Sunday, three pastors knelt and prayed with non-violent protesters who marched against Birmingham’s segregated society. We learned from Paulette, a Foot Soldier, who was 13 when she was part of the Children’s Crusade on May 2, 1963, who were met my police with German shepherd dogs, and the fire department with fire hoses spraying the children. Bull Connor was the Commissioner of Public Safety at the time.
We toured the A.G. Gaston Motel, a Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed in this motel, one of the few places for Blacks, and listed in the “Green Book.”
After lunch we received a guided tour of the 16th Street Baptist Church, where on Sept 15, 1963, four young girls were killed when white supremacists planted dynamite outside against the church, which exploded at 10:22 a.m. The girls were in the ladies’ lounge getting ready for Youth Sunday service at 10:45 a.m. The lesson that day was Matthew 5:44-45, which instructs Christians to actively love and pray for those who hate or persecute you.
Our final learning and immersion experience of the day was at the expansive Birmingham Civil Rights Museum. We came face to face with deeper truths about segregation and the struggle and fight for equity and justice.
Thursday, April 23
We have gathered in Birmingham, Alabama. Each of us has been preparing for this journey for months, with reading, praying, studying, and building our pilgrimage community for this encounter with history, injustice, repentance and renewal. Easter joy promises new and eternal life in Christ with God. Please keep us in prayer as we learn and discover our own and communal challenges of revealing God’s Beloved Community over the next four days.
Today, Thursday, we will visit Kelly Ingram Park, the 16th Baptist Church, and the Civil Rights Museum.
Please pray with us this prayer we wrote:
Loving God, grant us freedom to have an open mind to accept and understand what we are about to see and experience, we ask this in Jesus name. AMEN.
Wednesday, April 22
Travel day – the Pilgrims traveled separately to Birmingham, AL.
