A candlelight vigil will honor U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and the Rev. C.T. Vivian at 6 p.m. Monday, July 20, in Kelly Ingram Park in downtown Birmingham. The city of Birmingham is hosting the event.
Vivian, a key lieutenant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who pushed for voting rights for Blacks in Selma, and Alabama native Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders who was beaten by Alabama law officers on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, died within hours of each other Friday, July 17.
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Masks are mandatory at the vigil and social distancing is required, according to the city of Birmingham’s Facebook page.
After the infamous beating of Freedom Riders at the Birmingham Trailways station in May 1963, Lewis led a group of Freedom Riders from Nashville to Birmingham with the goal of completing the rides – to Montgomery, through Mississippi and to New Orleans. Their bus made it to Birmingham safely, but it was surrounded by a white mob as they waited for a new driver.
Infamous police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor placed the riders in “protective custody” and jailed them. Just before midnight, Connor had the riders dragged from the jail into three unmarked station wagons. He told them he was taking them back to Nashville.
Taylor Branch in the first volume of his civil rights history, “Parting the Waters,” captured the odd ride north on U.S. 31 as Lewis sat behind Connor.
“His fears of police beatings, even a prearranged lynching, gradually receded as Katherine Burke, one of the more outspoken Freedom Riders, launched into a friendly conversation with her fearsome captor, offering to cook him breakfast and smother him with Christian kindness if he would accompany her back to Tennessee State in Nashville,” Branch wrote. “Connor responded with good-natured yarns about how much he would appreciate her cooking. As the miles rolled by, the two of them settled into a rather jolly conversation, much to the wonder of Lewis and others.”
The ride ended abruptly when Connor stopped the police caravan in Ardmore and left them and their luggage on the side of the road, about halfway between Birmingham and Nashville.
Lewis would go on to become the youngest speaker at the March on Washington, where King gave his “I have a dream” speech, and to lead marchers in Selma on an attempted voting rights march to Montgomery that troopers ended at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge with a wedge of Alabama state troopers descending on the crowd with nightsticks and tear gas. The images of the brutal assault shocked the nation and helped lead to the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 and cemented Lewis’ status as a civil rights icon.
Birmingham Mayor Randall L. Woodfin will join several community partners in delivering comments at the candlelight vigil. Birmingham City Hall will be lit up in red, green, gold and black all week in honor of them. These colors are used during Black History Month and Juneteenth.
(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)
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