Published by: Bruce Siegel on 6/30/2011 1:50:09 PM
For many, the civil rights struggles are becoming a distant memory. Most Americans were born after 1970 and have no memory of days when segregation and discrimination were not just tolerated; they were brutally enforced policy across large parts of this nation.
That history was brought home full force to me as I visited Cooper Green Mercy Hospital and toured Birmingham, Alabama, with renowned hospital CEO Dr. Sandral Hullett. In Birmingham, this past is still very much visible. I was privileged to address the Jefferson County Commission on the need for the safety net, as well as the need for it to evolve as times change. Only later did I realize I was in the same complex where 48 years earlier, Martin Luther King, Jr., had penned his Letter from Birmingham Jail, declaring that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Later that day Dr. Hullett took me to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, one of the finest centers chronicling the history of human rights and the battles in the South. Hardly a museum, it is packed with interactive exhibits that pull no punches and confront history. It sits directly across from the park where Bull Connor unleashed his dogs and adjacent to the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four black girls would perish in one of a wave of bombings designed to sow fear and terror. Dr. Hullet also talked to me about her role in nonviolent protest in those days as one of the many students who daily risked life and limb for justice. Civil rights does not seem like “history” in northern Alabama.
Today, too many Americans suffer from a lack of good health care, decent housing and schools because of “who” they are. In Birmingham, the very future of Cooper Green is up for debate with the county’s fiscal squeeze. These are very much issues of rights, just as they were 50 years ago. But my trip to Birmingham reminded me that millions came together not so long ago to bridge divides, and we can still do so today.