Johnson: Listen to Birminghamâs foot soldiers, whose voices are strengthened by their pain

This is an opinion column.

Listen.

They’re hard to hear sometimes—even when they’re near.

Still, listen.

Some of the voices have been stilled. Stilled by time. Stilled by weariness. Stilled by pain. Stilled by tears.

Leaving you wishing you’d…listened.

Some of the voices are faint—yet strong. Faint from weariness. Faint from pain. Faint from tears. Faint from loss.

Faint from battles still not won.

Yet still strong. Strengthened by the cause. Strengthened by victories. Strengthened by friends. By their faith. Friends who walked beside them. Friends who ran with them from racist police, from the Klan—usually one in the same back then. Friends who laughed, sang, and endured and endured beside them.

Listen.

In just a few days, more than 3,000 of my closest friends will begin arriving in Birmingham for the 2023 National Association of Black Journalists Convention & Career Fair. Our theme: Revolution to evolution.

I’ve been an NABJ member for 37 years. I struggle to express how much its people and purpose have supported me throughout my journalistic journey. It’s gonna be a whole good and gratifying time.

Their arrival is the culmination of a quest that began six years ago when fellow NABJ member Steve Crocker, a friend and anchor at WBRC, inquired about applying to bring the annual gathering to our city at the convention in New Orleans.

NABJ leaders laughed. Some hilariously so.

He and I brought it up again two years later in Miami, which would be (duh) the most popular convention in the history of the organization.

Some still laughed. Some began to listen.

Now, they’re coming—for myriad reasons, not the least of which is this: There are people here our members must hear, people they must know. People to whom they must listen.

They’re coming because 60 years ago, Birmingham ignited seismic change. In Birmingham. In Alabama. In America.

In us.

Change on the heels of children—children who marched, children who defied, children who endured.

Children who died.

Many of them are still with us, still sharing. Some still in pain, as I was reminded last weekend while listening to testimonies from a group of foot soldiers hosted at The Ballard House, an homage to the late Dr. Henry H. Ballard, who constructed the pace as a home and office in 1940 amid an array of breathing, thriving Black businesses. The Housed passed through other owners, and in 1959 became the office of Dr. Hershell L. Hamilton, theLike so many in his time, Dr. Hamilton played a vital, but not always visibly celebrated role in the movement. He treated the wounds of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Rev. Martin Luther King, and young foot soldiers injured six decades ago—and not just when they were attacked by Bull Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses.

Also, when they were confronted by racist police, by the Klan—most often one in the same back then.

When “walking while Black,” recalled Terry Collins, one among the foot soldiers in the room, each of whom stood and shared. The rest of us listened. first certified Black general surgeon in Alabama.

Collins shared a memory “you won’t find on Google”—when a friend with whom he was walking was picked out of their group by a Birmingham police officer, dragged to a train trestle, then thrown off. “Fortunately, he didn’t die,” Collins said. “He was bow-legged the rest of his life.”

“That’s the price many foot soldiers paid,” he said. “You didn’t have to do anything but just be present. We endured.”

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Listen.

Nadine Smith talked about being “arrested on the corner of 5th Avenue and 17th Street” six decades ago during the Children’s Crusade.

“They put us on buses to the city jail…. There were too many of us…We went to, I think, the air force barracks…There were three floors; the second floor was the recreation room, the third was where slept.… We pushed our bunks together because they just gave us one sheet to cover the bottom of the bed, so we took one to cover the bottom and the other sheet to cover ourselves…Because of that they declared we were doing improper things and sent us down to the second floor where we had to sleep on cement floors… for four or five days… People have asked, Were you afraid? No.”

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Listen. To Amie Evans.

“I wasn’t afraid. but when I was put in the paddy wagon that’s when I became a little afraid. We were taken to the city jail… I lived two or three blocks from the city jail… We were locked up in a fenced-in area. I said, ‘If only I could get out of this fence, I could go home.” They let it rain on us …we were soaking wet… They put us on yellow school buses…took us to juvenile …We gave them our names. Everything else, no comment… We were put on school buses again and taken to Fair Park. Lord, it seemed like the man bump [us] in every hole they could find. To [shake] us up. To scare us. We wasn’t to talk to the others when we went to eat… we didn’t have chairs, so we sat on the cement floor all day…Stayed there for five days. We were doing it for a purpose. If I could do it again, I’d do it again…”

Listen. To Iris Phillips. She played a different role. She didn’t march but was among those expected to honor the fruits of protests. She shared how many women, Black and white—women like Minnie Gaston, wife of business mogul A.G. Gaston—trained and set high standards for young women entering new places of work.

“When folks began hiring Black girls, they always said, ‘Make sure they’re light-skinned and cute.’ Well, Mrs. Gaston said, ‘They may not be light-skinned, and they may not be cute, but I’ll send you my best’… They prepared us. We were taught to type on blind typewriters. There were no mistakes. When you flipped those letters out of your they [were] ready to be signed. They trained us. When we went into those buildings, it was a very pleasant place to be. But coming up under [the women], they poured their hearts into us. We could not let them down. [She looked at the marchers] We were not about to disappoint you all. Everything that happened we had to let it roll off our backs… We went there to work.”

Listen. Closely. To Mildred Bennett. “I don’t like to come to these things,” she told me later. “It hurts.”

“We had a bad time… My mom and I went down Jasper Road, got on the trolley. My brother was kicked…I think he lost some of his teeth… We ran from downtown, from 16th Baptist Church to 26th to where we lived on jasper road…Klu Klux (she couldn’t finish) …Well, they burned our house… There were 18 of us kids, my mother had three sets of twins… lord have mercy, we had to come home from school and hide in the closet every day… At two o’clock in the morning, the hooded thugs would come burn a cross on our hill. … This was after my dad died. I was two… They burned [so many crosses] they got tired of us not leaving, I guess. The night they decided to burn us out of the house, mom told the older boys to get us out of the closet and hide us. She got daddy’s sawed-off double-barrel shotgun… Shot the gun. They ran off. … Three days later, they found my sister in a ditch with her head face up dead. …I’ve been through a lot. I’m still going through it.”

There will be copious amounts to digest next week—ideas, debates, and, of course, the city’s abundance of culinary gems.

Yet, my friends, your nourishment will come from the voices. Listen…while they’re still strong.

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