Well, I thought that I'd post a picture of the Birmingham Jail -- it's not *the* jail where Martin Luther King wrote his letter; this is the modern jail. But it is adjacent to the Jefferson County criminal court, where Bobby Frank Cherry, the last of the surviving bombers of the 16th Street Baptist Church was tried back in 2002.
I attended the trial; there was pathos everywhere -- in the fact that other than reporters and a few family members and an occassional group of school children who stayed only for a few minutes each -- that few people in the community seemed to care.
Little bit of a funny story here: I went up to the first day of the trial with one of my friends (and colleagues) at Alabama. And on the way up to the courthouse, he had the idea to call the judge's chambers and ask about getting a ticket. As I recall from what I heard on his end of the conversation, the judge's secretary couldn't believe the question. Just show up and you'll get in seemed to be her bewildered response. That, of course, is what we did -- no problem getting seating.
What our nation had long since put behind itself and its memory was an event that wasn't even fully completed for Birmingham. And even in Birmingham, most of the city had moved on. The moving on part is positive, of course -- the changes were so dramatic over the past forty years -- but the victims' day in court had been delayed for so long that it must have taken away some of the meaning for them. And Bobby Frank Cherry was an elderly man by that point. His lawyer made a feeble appeal to understand the man in his times, but even that seemed (to my ears) half-hearted.
I've included a couple of pictures of the 16th Street Baptist Church as well.
*When we vacation in the tropics, to escape cold winters, we are warmed by the sight of bright flowers basking in the sun.
Posted by: Coach Factory Store | February 24, 2011 at 02:52 AM