Alabama News

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JD Crowe: Juneteenth 2025: 160 years later, Alabama finally celebrates the end of slavery

This is an opinion cartoon.

“Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.” – Frederick Douglass

Alabama is Juneteenth official, y’all!

June 19 marks the day in 1865 when word finally reached the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas that they were free — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed.

160 years later, we don’t need to party like it’s 1865. But we can finally, officially celebrate the end of slavery in Alabama on our newest state holiday. Happy Juneteenth. It’s been a long time coming.

Juneteenth was finally authorized as a federal holiday in 2021. But it’s only been a temporary holiday in Alabama since Gov. Kay Ivey established it as such by proclamation in 2022.

“Since President Trump observed Juneteenth in June of 2020, we have proclaimed it each year, and I am pleased the Legislature has made it an official state holiday,” Ivey said in a release.

Now that we’re inching forward, can we take a look at all those embarrassing Alabama Confederate holidays?

Alabama celebrates three Confederate-related state holidays: Confederate Memorial Day in April, the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in June, and the joint holiday of Robert E. Lee Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January. That’s two and a half too many.

I say we at least swap out Robert E. Lee Day for Frederick Douglass Day.

Douglass was one of the most powerful voices in the fight to end slavery in America. Born into bondage, he escaped and used his incredible gifts for educating the world about the brutal reality of slavery. Douglass became a leading abolitionist, adviser to presidents, and a living example of Black excellence and intellect in the face of oppression.

Let’s celebrate this Juneteenth with a few quotes from America’s greatest abolitionist:

“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

“Shoot down the Confederacy and uphold the flag; the American flag.”

“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”

“Men do not love those who remind them of their sins.”

“They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.”

“I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.”

“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group andAL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter@Crowejam andInstagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].

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Rep the MLB-best Detroit Tigers with Nike’s newest ‘Lights Out’ collection

As the 2025 MLB season nears its midpoint, the Detroit Tigers are the best team in the league. Sitting atop the remaining 29 teams with a 47-27 record, Detroit’s looking to continue their reign of dominance in the second half of the regular season.

The Tigers have been pumping out tons of new gear for players and fans recently. Whether it’s the Stars and Stripes collection or All-Star game apparel, Tigers fans have plenty of options to choose from for new gear.

Throw another hat into the ring, as Nike and MLB debuted their ‘Lights Out’ collection, as each team gets an all-black look. The entire Tigers collection can be viewed here.

Here’s some of the gear listed for the Tigers ‘Lights Out’ collection:

Oddly enough, Nike didn’t release any Tigers jerseys in this collection like they did with multiple other teams. Fans looking for Tigers jerseys in general can do so by clicking here.

All of the items above are eligible for free shipping with code “24SHIP” at checkout.

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An independent grocer’s view: SNAP keeps Alabama families fed and communities strong

This a guest opinion

As an independent grocer in Opelika, Alabama, I’ve had the honor of feeding my community for nearly half a century. To me, being a community grocer is more than a career—it’s my calling.

Yet today, that calling is encountering new pressures from lawmakers in Washington. Proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would reduce federal funding by over 25 percent, harming one of the most effective and efficient public-private partnerships in American history.

In Alabama, more than 300,000 Alabama households depend on SNAP to help put food on the table, with an average benefit of just $6 per day. Roughly 40 percent of these families include seniors or individuals with disabilities, and half have children. Nationwide, more than one million SNAP recipients are veterans who once served our country but now struggle to afford their next meal. These aren’t just statistics; they are our neighbors, our fellow parishioners, our classmates, and our friends; people who have fallen into hard times.

SNAP is not a handout for these people, but rather a bridge to helping people get back on their feet. Work requirements significantly limit benefits if participants do not work, and SNAP restricts the purchase of alcohol, tobacco, and household non-food products.

At Wright’s Market, we proudly serve thousands of customers each year who rely on SNAP to feed their families. They come to my store determined to stretch their SNAP dollars to provide healthy food to their families. SNAP allows us to serve these customers with dignity and meet their needs in real time.

But SNAP is more than an anti-hunger program; it’s a cornerstone of local economies in rural towns and urban centers across Alabama. Supporting more than 27,000 jobs statewide, SNAP is a powerful economic engine for Alabama, generating $1.1 billion in local wages and contributing $197 million in state tax revenue. The money goes straight into local economies like grocery stores, farmers markets, and food retailers. It helps sustain small businesses and local jobs.

If SNAP funding is slashed, the pain will ripple beyond the families who depend on it. It will also destabilize Main Street USA. Small grocers like Wright’s Market and those that serve food deserts will be hit hard. The loss of SNAP dollars could make it impossible for some locally owned stores to stay open, meaning those areas will lose vital community support and grocery jobs along with their access to healthy food.

Under the proposed plan, much of the cost to support SNAP would shift to states. Alabama—like so many other states in our country—is in no position to take on the additional cost. “Just don’t bankrupt us,” is what Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said about the proposed SNAP changes. “Coach” clearly sees that Alabama can’t afford the cost-shifting plan being considered by Republicans in Congress. Likewise, Alabama families in need can’t afford to lose access to SNAP.

As a grocer, I ask our lawmakers in Congress to protect SNAP and the families that depend on it. I invite them to visit our store, meet our customers, and see how this program works in the real world. Cutting SNAP may look like a budget decision in Washington, but in America it will look like empty shelves, empty stomachs, and struggling businesses.

I urge our lawmakers in Congress to reexamine these potentially catastrophic alterations and consider the long-term consequences for families, communities, and local economies. Together, we can pursue fiscal responsibility without weakening the social and economic fabric of Main Street America.

Let’s work together to keep SNAP strong; our communities depend on it. I welcome the opportunity to engage with our elected officials from both parties, and with President Trump’s administration to discuss this issue.

Jimmy Wright is an independent grocer who owns Wright’s Market in Opelika.

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Massive SNAP cuts could kill hundreds of Alabama grocery stores, ‘send hunger soaring’

Jimmy Wright fears that if the federal government follows through on major cuts to food assistance programs, he’ll have to lay off some of the people who work at his grocery store in Alabama.

At Wright’s Market, an independent grocery store in Opelika, about 35% of the customers use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP.

“It could have a huge impact on our business,” Wright told AL.com “If business drops by 20%, I can’t cut off 20% of my lights or call my insurance company and tell them I’m going to have to reduce what I pay them to compensate. All that’s left is payroll.”

According to the Alabama Grocers Association, SNAP supports 7,800 jobs in the state and $350 million in wages.

Feeding Alabama, a coalition of food banks, estimates that hundreds of grocery stores in the state would close if the funding cuts are passed. And a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy organization, said that 18 counties in the state are at a higher risk for losing their food retailers.

Ellie Taylor, president and CEO of the state grocers association, told AL.com that retailers in low-income communities get upwards of 70% of their sales from SNAP.

A 20% to 30% cut in the program “would lead them to close and likely create food deserts,” she said.

Wright thinks his store can survive the cuts, “to an extent,” since he doesn’t owe any money on his business. But he said other stores that serve a higher percentage of SNAP recipients likely won’t.

“I’m extremely concerned about urban and rural communities, because those stores will be the first to go and we will have an ungodly issue with food access,” he said.

The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Nearly 400,000 households and 333,590 children in the state receive food assistance through SNAP, according to the Alabama Department of Human Resources.

The proposed cuts to the program are part of President Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that aims to drastically reduce government spending.

The version of the bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives would cut SNAP’s budget by nearly $300 billion over the next decade. It would also shift 75% of administrative costs to the state, potentially costing Alabama $300 million a year, according to Alabama Arise.

“I don’t know whether we can afford it or not,” said U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor.

“Everybody that’s going to be in state government is going to be concerned about it,” Tuberville told Politico in a brief interview earlier this month.

The Senate’s version of the bill, which Tuberville will eventually have to vote on once it’s finalized, has similar language to the House’s on SNAP cuts.

“There is real reason to worry that the Legislature can’t or wouldn’t provide this additional funding,” said Robyn Hyden, executive director of Alabama Arise, in a news release after the House passed the bill.

“In that case, Alabama would be forced to cut SNAP benefits significantly – or even eliminate the program altogether for nearly 800,000 participants statewide. These cuts would send hunger soaring and devastate the economy in local communities across Alabama.”

‘It’s about people’

Rural counties are at higher risk of losing their grocery stores, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, given that a high percentage of their population is enrolled in SNAP. The group looked at data from the United States Department of Agriculture to identify the 18 counties that are at the highest risk in Alabama.

In those 18 counties, there are 650 retailers that take SNAP, according to the data.

Over half of those counties are in the Black Belt, including Montgomery County, and the rest are in south Alabama. Retailers in Wilcox and Perry counties face the most risk as over 40% of their populations use SNAP.

Taylor, from the Alabama Grocers Association, says she agrees with the center’s analysis.

“I wish that data wasn’t from such a left-leaning group, but I do think it is accurate,” she said in an email to AL.com.

Nationwide, the organization estimates that 27,000 grocery stores and food retailers would be harmed by the cuts.

One way retailers may try to mitigate the cuts is by increasing food prices for everyone, according to the Food Research and Action Center.

“One of the things that we anticipate is, if enough people lose SNAP, what it could create is increased prices in that store to balance their books due to the loss,” said Salaam Bhatti, the SNAP director at the Food Research and Action Center.

But even in that case, Bhatti doubts that raising food prices would help keep a store open.

“Food would become unaffordable even for people at higher income levels,” he said. “If costs go up, a store would likely lose those customers, and so then ultimately they close down.”

“We’re not just going to see food insecurity increase for entire communities,” he added, “we’ll see the loss of jobs, we’ll see negative health outcomes and we will see increased cost of health care.”

About one in five people in Alabama experience food insecurity, meaning they don’t know where their next meal will come from. For every meal that a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine, according to Feeding Alabama.

“It’s really scary to think about how hunger could get a lot worse in Alabama if these cuts pass,” said LaTrell Clifford Wood with Alabama Arise. “Look at places like Perry County, one of the most food insecure places in the country. People there are already driving 30 minutes to the nearest Walmart for food.”

Wright said he won’t raise prices if the cuts go through, fearing his customers would find somewhere else to go if he did.

Even now he sells some of his produce below cost to help his customers “stretch their dollar” as food prices across the country are already on the rise due to inflation.

So instead he’ll have to let go of some of his employees. That’s a painful possibility, since he used to work at the market when he was in school. He saved up enough money to buy it in 1997.

“We’re the place where kids get their first shot,” he said.

And he helps give second chances too, employing three people who graduated from substance abuse programs.

“For me this isn’t about politics, it’s about people,” he said.

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Educator and farmer Joe May to launch his Birmingham city council campaign on Juneteenth

The competition for the Birmingham city council District 8 seat is heating up as a third candidate enters the race.

Joe May, an educator and urban farmer, is kicking off his campaign on Juneteenth at Holy Family Parish Hall in Ensley from 3 to 5 p.m. He said the event will emphasize his campaign’s commitment to justice, sustainability and community empowerment.

“Our young people need more than promises—they need opportunities to lead and learn right in their own neighborhoods,” May said in a statement.

“That’s why, as a former educator, I know the power of school partnerships and after-school programs rooted in teaching life skills and community engagement.”

The primary election is on Aug. 26. Birmingham City Councilor Carol E. Clarke, who was elected in 2021 to represent District 8, will not seek re-election.

May is running against Birmingham Board of Education member Sonja Smith for the city council seat, according to reports from Birmingham Watch, and 23-year-old activist Justin Smith.

May’s campaign will focus on improving public safety, fighting for small businesses and investing in education and neighborhood revitalization.

May taught history at Holy Family Cristo Rey where he started an investment club to teach students the importance of saving for the future.

In 2014, he was selected to join a fellowship program with the New York Stock Exchange.

May worked with the Holy Family Parish Hall to create a community garden that provides fresh food and a safe space for local families.

May said he will combine his farming and education experience to continue to revitalize his community and provide educational opportunities for youth.

“As a farmer and entrepreneur, I know community gardens offer more than sustainability; they double as outdoor classrooms. We can create jobs, teach sustainability, and keep our streets clean and paved all at the same time. This is about a short-term goal that leads to our shared long-term vision for District 8,” May said in a statement.

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Searching for origin of fake AI Alabama football Facebook posts littering your feed

In the old days, the grocery store checkout was your home for brain rot.

Bigfoot sightings, UFOs spotted, Bigfoot sightings on UFOs with Elvis and Tupac grabbing a ride. The trash tabloids had it all.

Now it’s all in your pocket.

And it’s Nick Saban, Jalen Hurts and Kalen DeBoer who’ve become the main characters in these viral tales for which there’s no vaccine.

We’re talking about these outrageously false Facebook posts that’ve taken over algorithms.

These posts dupe the same people who believed chain emails would save the world. They’re mostly harmless — laughable at times — but their virality further exposes the decay in our collective grip on reality and a lack of news literacy that extends beyond the sports posts we’re referencing.

If you’re reading this and have a Facebook presence, there’s no way you’ve missed these posts.

Like the one about Saban adopting an abandoned baby.

Or the one about an 8.5-foot-tall No. 1 recruit committing to Alabama.

Or the one about Alabama star receiver Ryan Williams turning down a $200 million NIL offer from Texas.

They often come with a gallery of the most outrageous Artificial Intelligence-generated photos that should trigger any BS meter. And yet, they can generate hundreds or thousands of interactions and comments.

The phenomenon is not exclusive to Alabama football, either. Pages dedicated to various teams, sports and general interests have popped up in what appears to be a network of foreign-based operations.

Take the page, ROLL TIDE Football, as an example. The page launched last fall has more than 8,000 followers. Its listed address on the info tab is a garbled mess, but when searched, it is the Gulf State Park Pavilion in Gulf Shores.

Bama Pride Hub (almost 5,000 followers) lists an address that’s actually the Stockyard Grill restaurant in Montgomery.

Look a little deeper on the required disclosures on their page and you see the administrators aren’t even based on this continent.

ROLL TIDE Football’s page manager is located in Nigeria. Bama Pide Hub’s manager had three managers in Vietnam and one in Australia.

Bama Legion Rising (7,100 followers) is also Vietnam-based. Touchdown Trib (6,500 followers) is too with four managers also located in the Philippines.

Several were created within days of each other in October and November of 2024.

These pages often share the same bogus stories and their intentions are clear. They’re designed to drive engagement (likes, hearts, comments) which helps it earn income directly from Facebook while helping its standing within the social network’s algorithm.

That virality leads to being suggested on more timelines and perpetuates this cycle.

These are mostly harmless lies and falsehoods designed to drive the conversation.

ROLL TIDE Football, for example, had a post May 25 claiming Kalen DeBoer “appointed” former Alabama star AJ McCarron as the Crimson Tide’s new QB coach. It came with an AI-generated photo of the two shaking hands and a link to a story page hosted on the site indiansports24 dot com.

The Facebook post has 6,200 likes and hearts, 672 comments and nearly 500 shares as of mid-June.

Others are designed to feed into political divisions that also germinate on social media. One post was shared dozens of times with different players and coaches listed as the main character who refuses to celebrate Pride Month while renouncing “woke” ideas. One falsely claiming Hurts said this has 3,500 interactions, 120-plus shares and 300-plus comments (only two of which state it’s fake).

The motives are less ideological and more economical.

And the sites these web pages are linked to are covered in ads that draw additional revenue for those behind these operations.

It could go even deeper than that.

When searched through a database of domain names, ROLL TIDE Football’s listed website is registered in Reykjavik, Iceland. The telephone number associated with the company has been linked to phishing schemes and other fraudulent activity, according to reports from the Better Business Bureau and even agencies within the United States federal government.

These false stories have even trickled into life outside of Facebook.

A caller to the Kalen DeBoer radio show in November was fooled by a Facebook post that claimed the coach’s wife was pregnant with their third child. He was a good sport about it, laughed, and acknowledged that call wasn’t the first he’s heard the made-up headline.

“The only reason I know is because I’ve got a lot of text messages saying congratulations,” DeBoer said on the Nov. 6 episode of the live, call-in show.

That hasn’t stopped the storyline from persisting on Facebook pages. Another one from Bama Pride Hub posted Nov. 18 and got 3,800 interactions. The same page posted the same story April 23 and got 163 interactions.

That begs the question: Why does Facebook allow these outrageous lies on its platform?

Well, its parent company in January announced it had eliminated third-party fact-checkers paid to tamp down misinformation in the name of ending “censorship.” Instead, it would be adding a crowd-sourced community note feature like on X (formerly Twitter) to combat misinformation. It remains in the testing phase.

There are also policies regarding AI-generated content. Meta “requires you to label content you share that has photorealistic video or realistic-sounding audio that has been digitally generated or altered, including with AI,” according to its website.

That’s clearly not enforced.

The policy also states that the site can detect AI-generated content and would add labels when found. That’s clearly not happening either.

AL.com requested comment from Meta after sending an example of these AI-generated posts, but the company did not respond before publication of this story. A company spokesperson responded to NPR in May 2024 for a story on the same topic.

“We work to reduce the spread of content that is spammy or sensational because we want users to have a good experience, which is why we offer them controls to what they see in their feed,” the Meta statement read.

Yet it continues. And the fake AI content output has only compounded since then.

Another subset of this universe is the Facebook groups that operate separately from the pages.

One named simply “Alabama football” has more than 145,000 members. None of the 16 administrators or managers appear to have legitimate profiles while sharing some of the same nonsensical fake stories.

One admin with the name “Alabama Beautiful” shares a mixture of photos lifted from other sites and laughably false stories. One from early June claimed quarterback Ty Simpson donated $450,000 to the Alabama football program accompanied by a headshot of a player who isn’t Simpson. Another on June 7 announced Alabama unveiled a statue of Saban … the same statue that’s stood outside Bryant-Denny Stadium since 2011.

Or a post repeated a few times on “Alabama Crimson Tide Football Talk” that claimed Mark Ingram was coming back to the program with a photo of current Tide safety Bray Hubbard. It’s safe to say the two would never be confused visually.

The mind-numbing examples are countless.

AL.com attempted to reach the Alabama Beautiful account, but messages sent through Facebook went unanswered. Messages sent to the listed email accounts of several pages bounced back as undeliverable.

Not everyone is fooled, and there’s growing pushback within the comments of these insane posts. Even the Meta AI summaries of comments with high engagement acknowledge it.

“Commenters are skeptical about the post’s validity,” reads one summary below clearly fake photos of a sorrowful Hurts sitting next to an ailing Saban in a hospital bed, “citing inconsistencies in the photo, such as Jalen Hurts’ hands and Nick Saban’s oxygen tube. Many believe it’s AI-generated and not a real update on Saban’s health, noting that legitimate news would be widely reported.”

Still, 1,300-plus users hit the thumbs up, heart or the caring response under the post.

And the cycle continues.

Again, we’re talking about mostly frivolous subject matters and largely harmless lies.

Yet it exposes the potential to deceive a captive audience not always equipped to spot even the most obvious lies.

It erodes user confidence in legitimate news on the platform when forced to coexist with clickbait scams with no oversight from Facebook.

Bigfoot is back.

He’s riding the Loch Ness Monster and waving to Elvis and all it took was an internet connection in Vietnam.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.

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Flash flood warning issued for North Alabama until Thursday morning caused by thunderstorms

On Thursday at 5:59 a.m. a flash flood warning was issued by the National Weather Service in effect until 9 a.m. for Colbert, Lauderdale, Lawrence and Limestone counties.

“At 5:59 a.m., Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing heavy rain across the warned area. Between 1 and 2 inches of rain have fallen. Additional rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches are possible in the warned area. Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly,” according to the weather service. “Flash flooding of small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as other poor drainage and low-lying areas.”

Locations impacted by the warning include Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, Tuscumbia, Rogersville, Killen, Lexington, St. Florian, Underwood-Petersville, Anderson, Center Star, Elgin, Kingtown, Ford City, Red Bank, Green Hill, Whitehead, Northwest Alabama Regional Airport, Oliver and Zip City.

The weather service states, “Turn around, don’t drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles.”

Your guide to weather alerts: advisories, watches, and warnings

• Flash flood warning: Take action!

A flash flood warning is issued when a flash flood is either imminent or already occurring. In flood-prone areas, it’s crucial to move immediately to higher ground. A flash flood is a sudden and violent inundation that can develop within minutes to hours, and it can even happen in areas not currently experiencing rainfall.

• Flood warning: Take action!

A flood warning is declared when flooding is on the verge of happening or is already underway.

• Flood advisory: Be aware:

A flood advisory is issued when flooding is not expected to be bad enough to issue a warning. However, it may cause significant inconvenience, and if caution is not exercised, it could lead to situations that may threaten life and/or property.

• Flood watch: Be prepared:

A flood watch is issued when conditions are favorable for flooding. It doesn’t guarantee that flooding will occur, but it signifies that the possibility exists.

Keeping safe during floods: Expert advice from the weather service

Floods can pose a significant threat, especially if you live in a flood-prone area or find yourself camping in a low-lying region. To ensure your safety, the weather service offers essential flood safety guidelines:

Seek higher ground:

If you’re in a flood-prone area, or if you’re camping in a low-lying spot, move to higher ground as a first step.

Adhere to evacuation orders:

When local authorities issue an evacuation order, promptly comply. Before leaving, secure your home by locking it.

Disconnect utilities and appliances:

If time permits, disconnect your utilities and appliances. This precaution minimizes electrical hazards during flooding.

Steer clear of flooded basements and submerged areas:

Steer clear of basements or rooms where water has submerged electrical outlets or cords. This helps prevent electrical accidents.

Swift evacuation for your safety:

If you notice sparks or hear buzzing, crackling, snapping, or popping sounds, evacuate without delay. Do not enter water that may carry an electrical charge.

Stay away from floodwaters:

Never attempt to walk through floodwaters, even if they appear shallow. Just 6 inches of fast-moving water can forcefully sweep you off your feet.

Seek higher ground when trapped:

In the event you become trapped by moving water, make your way to the highest point available and contact emergency services by calling 911.

When heavy rain occurs, there is a risk of flooding, particularly in low-lying and flood-prone regions. It is important to never attempt to drive through water on the road, regardless of how deep it appears. According to the weather service, as little as 12 inches of rushing water can sweep away most vehicles. Stay safe by being prepared and informed.

Navigating rainy roads: Safety tips for wet weather

When heavy rain sets in, the risk of flooding and hazardous driving conditions rises. Whether it’s prolonged rainfall or rapid runoff, being prepared is essential. Here are some valuable safety tips from the weather service to ensure you stay safe in heavy rain:

Beware of rapid water flow:

During heavy rain, avoid parking or walking near culverts or drainage ditches, where swift-moving water can pose a serious risk.

Maintain safe driving distances:

Use the two-second rule to maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you and allow an extra two seconds in heavy rain.

Reduce speed and drive cautiously:

If it is raining and the roads are wet, slow down. Take your foot off the accelerator and let your speed drop gradually. Never use the brakes suddenly because this may cause the car to skid.

Choose your lane wisely:

Stick to the middle lanes on multi-lane roads to minimize the risk of hydroplaning, as water tends to accumulate in outer lanes.

Visibility matters:

Turn on your headlights and be careful of other vehicles to the rear and in blind spot areas as they are especially difficult to see through rain-spattered windows.

Watch out for slippery roads:

The initial half-hour of rain is when roads are slickest due to a mixture of rain, grime, and oil. Exercise heightened caution during this period.

Keep a safe distance from large vehicles:

Large trucks and buses can reduce your visibility with tire spray. Avoid tailgating and pass them swiftly and safely.

Mind your windshield wipers:

• Overloaded wiper blades can hinder visibility. If rain severely limits your sight, pull over and wait for conditions to improve. Seek refuge at rest areas or protected spots.
• When stopping by the roadside is your only option, position your vehicle as far off the road as possible, ideally beyond guardrails. Keep your headlights on and activate emergency flashers to alert other drivers of your position.

In the face of heavy rain, these precautions can make a significant difference in ensuring your safety on the road. Remember to stay informed about weather conditions and heed guidance from local authorities for a secure journey.

Advance Local Weather Alerts is a service provided by United Robots, which uses machine learning to compile the latest data from the National Weather Service.

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Johnson: Birmingham’s lagging civil rights district fails its hallowed legacy

This is an opinion column.

You still feel something. Walk through and around Kelly Ingram Park, just a few strides from Birmingham’s downtown core.

You still feel what happened there. You still feel the cries and chorus of young voices. You still feel, too, the hatred that sought to silence them, the snarling police dogs and powerful fire hoses that sought to stop them.

You still feel fear. And courage.

You still feel change.

The ground there is still hallowed dirt upon which true blood, sweat and tears were shed in the quest to squash legal racism in Birmingham and beyond. Still a destination for many seeking to know and learn from what happened there.

Yet the park is mostly sparse, as are crowds entering the proud but aging Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

The city — being real now — has lost ground. Lost its hallowed status as the state’s premier historic destination. Lost it to Montgomery, where the wrenchingly powerful Legacy Museum and National Memorial to Peace and Justice (the “lynching museum,” as I and so many describe it) draw more than 500,000 visitors annually to that city. They’ve also sparked the development of hotels and restaurants around the sites.

Half a million visitors seeking a raw, emotional understating of the impact of the more than 4,000 lynchings EJI chronicles, and a deep understanding of still-lingering effects of enslavement, Jim Crow and mass incarceration.

Losing even more ground is a very real threat to Birmingham, losing to Mobile. In recent weeks, that city stood in bold defiance of national edicts to douse and diminish our most painful history. In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order demanding the removal of exhibits at Smithsonian Institutions that “divide Americans based on race.”

Instead, Mobile last month broke ground on a $5.1 million Africatown Welcome Center that will rightfully honor a community founded by survivors of the Clotilda, the very last slave ship known to have reached our shores. Next week, the city will unveil its new Hall of Fame Walk, a dynamic collection of 9-foot bronze statues honoring sons of Mobile who are in the Major League Baseball and National Football League Halls.

Meanwhile, Birmingham stagnates. Its district sits silent, mostly. There is a wonderful Black-owned coffee shop — Alecia’s Coffee — in the restored A.G. Gaston motel just around the corner from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The city poured $10 million into the restoration; a $1.1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation helped build the coffee shop and hotel exhibits.

In April, 16th Street Baptist broke ground on a 13,000 square-foot Education and Visitors Center. As you read this, construction on the facility is grinding away. (Well, maybe not on Juneteenth.)

Otherwise, 20 square blocks of what should be an economically thriving homage to what happened there lay dormant and ignored. Too long languishing. Too long decaying.

That must change. After pausing today to commemorate Juneteenth — the day when the last of the nation’s enslaved learned they were free — Birmingham must not crawl back to a cave of complacency regarding the district. Must not allow it to continue to shiver and shrink beneath a tattered blanket of potential.

Birmingham must stop losing ground on ground that should be bearing copious fruit: jobs, businesses, retail and hospitality destinations and housing. Ground that should once again be a magnet to those seeking to know and learn more about how Birmingham changed us, and those who changed us.

Ground now parched from neglect — a stark contradiction to an economic explosion fueled by the city’s restaurant and sports tourism industries and a surge in small-business and tech-oriented companies.

“The lynching museum is one of the top tourist destinations in the state and it’s driving a lot of development,” says City Council President Darrell O’Quinn, whose district encompasses the civil rights region. “But to my eyes, Montgomery is like a cow town compared to Birmingham.”

To be fair, Montgomery’s ascendance is a testament to the singular gifts of Bryan Stevenson, the acclaimed attorney, filmmaker and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Even he’s now stunned at the local impact of the institutions he created.

“We were really just trying to create a space where we could talk about parts of our history that I don’t think have been adequately addressed,” Stevenson told AL.com last year. “The ambition at that time was relatively small, and I’ve been blown away by the response. I did not imagine that we’d see a half-million people a year want to come to these sites.”

“What happened in Montgomery — that never would have happened from within,” says Christopher Nanni, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, which facilitates varied efforts to promote regional cooperation. “It took a visionary with outside resources that was almost like a spaceship planted there.”

Alas, Birmingham doesn’t have its Stevenson, and he’s not cruising up I-65 to plant new seeds in this sacred ground. But there are folks here who know more should be done to honor, and, yes, leverage its legacy for growth.

Among them: real estate developer Michael Mouron, who’s restored several faded and forgotten shells and leased them to now-thriving businesses and nonprofit organizations.

“If people are driving and flying in to see those exhibits, guess what city they’re coming through to get to Montgomery: Birmingham,” he told me last month. “What’s to stop Birmingham from doing that?”

“There’s a lot of rich history here,” adds O’Quinn. “Folks around the world actually looked to Birmingham and emulated us. Maybe it’s one of those things now, like when you’re too familiar, familiarity breeds contempt. When you’re too close to a thing, you don’t really appreciate it. It’s just part of the human condition. There’s definitely a lot of opportunity.”

Just so we’re clear, I’m not casting blame and trying to dampen Juneteenth. I’m calling forth and challenging. I’m demanding that we all — city officials, developers, district property owners (yes, you, Alabama Power), our aging foot soldiers and pioneers, and others finally do what long ago should have been done: Convene, commit and execute a plan to birth economic vibrancy from the district’s soil.

Here’s the thing: There’s already a plan. A solid plan. A doable plan.

Just over five years ago, Urban Impact and Rev Birmingham cooperated to create thea master plan, the fruit of their 18-month effort to produce what they call a “community-based process for aligning future investment and development in the Civil Rights District and the Switch (surrounding Innovation Depot) with the community’s vision for this locally- and internationally-significant place.”

The Switch envelopes several blocks between 1st Ave North and 4th Ave North, extending west from the historic 14th Street Switchyard (I-65) to 16th Street. It sits just west of the Civil Rights District, which encompasses about 30 square blocks that include routes for demonstrations, including the 1963 Children’s March.

The plan called for “catalytic” development on five sites, three of them in the Civil Rights District. One proposal was for a hotel, residences, multi-level parking, a majestic event space and mixed-use development on the property between 6th and 7th Ave North and 16th and 17th Streets. (It’s now a parking lot across from the 16th St. Baptist Church and diagonally from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.)

Overall, the plan comprised six goals:

• Preventing displacement
• Community wealth-building
• Black-Owned business support
• Mixed-income development
• Public realm and identity
• Entrepreneur and start-up support

Finally, it offered next steps labelled “Six Big Moves to transform the Northwest quadrant and lift the Birmingham community”:

• Align district stewards with areas of responsibility
• Focus public investment on four vital corridors and two public spaces
• Drive small business and equitable real estate investment around vital corridors
• Establish a hub of entrepreneurial support resources
• Aggressively recruit key innovation organizations
• Break new ground on sites owned by civic champions

“It’s still a very valid plan, and it lays out a call to action,” says Ivan Holloway of Urban Impact.

So, what happened?

Unfortunate timing choked the plan, without question. It dropped in March 2020, which, of course, brought us the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Everything halted and shifted resources and priorities towards stayin’ alive. Since then, thanks in large part to a tsunami of federal relief funds, Birmingham has rebounded.

Last month, Mayor Randall Woodfin presented a record $591 million proposed 2025-2026 budget to the City Council. Accordingly, it emphasized investments in public safety (read: reducing homicides), neighborhood revitalization (i.e., addressing blight), infrastructure (potholes and paving) and youth programs (such as the recently announced Youth Sports League). All of those are important to most residents.

There is $1 million for operations at BCRI.

The city has also proposed the Birmingham Civil Rights Crossroads project, a 3-mile urban trail network reconnecting historic, yet long-neglected western neighborhoods with downtown, the Civil Rights District and beyond to Railroad Park.

Call it a potential artery through which an overlooked lifeblood will flow. Yet it is not an economic catalyst. Not a fuse, which requires more than one match.

“The challenge,” says Holloway, “has really been finding the right partners. One thing that sets Birmingham apart from the other cities is that everything centered around civil rights was really centered around people — and not just one person, but a series of people. Fast forward to where we are today, people are still looking for the mass interests of people being engaged.”

That’s a mouthful to say: Birmingham is different. It’s unique. It is it’s own best friend and own worst enemy. It’s why the city’s hallowed ground in and around Kelly Ingram Park is now little more than a stage for celebrating days like Juneteenth and not yet a catalyst for growth.

Not yet the kind of convening stage that could distinguish Birmingham amid the cacophony surrounding our history. Around what happened here.

And be a platform for economic opportunity, which is why the children marched.

That can change. It must. Now.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.

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General

Dear Abby: Is my daughter ungrateful for not liking my cake?

DEAR ABBY: My 40-year-old daughter is on weight-loss injections and a no-sugar diet. I offered to bake her a sugar-free cheesecake, and she agreed, but she asked me to make a “tester” cake three days before. I explained that the cake has a lengthy preparation process, involving a very slow bake in a water bath and 12 hours chill time.

I suggested she wait, but she insisted, so I made it early. She cut a slice of it and exclaimed how great it tasted.

Three days later, I baked and decorated a carrot cake to use as her “official” birthday cake, since the sugar-free cake had been cut and wouldn’t look nice in photos. (Carrot is her children’s favorite.) I hosted everyone at an expensive restaurant, and I gave her French perfume and a weekend getaway.

When we returned from the dinner, my daughter angrily said, “Get in here so we can cut this stupid cake, which I can’t eat!” I was shocked and confused. She said I shouldn’t have made a cake of a flavor she dislikes, but I pointed out that she had the sugar-free cake, too. Apparently, she had expected me to bake a second sugar-free cheesecake. I chewed her out for being ungrateful. Was I wrong? — UNAPPRECIATED IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR UNAPPRECIATED: I was under the impression that shots for weight loss curbed one’s appetite for sweets (and alcoholic beverages as well). Your daughter appears to have an insatiable sweet tooth, sugar-free or not. What she was angling for was two cheesecakes rather than one.

Her attitude is entitled and ungrateful, and she should be ashamed of herself. I wish her luck keeping off the weight she loses, because her chances aren’t great with that attitude.

Read more Dear Abby and other advice columns.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

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