These five blocks hold the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, established in 2017. This site was established in 2017 to preserve and commemorate the work of the 1963 Birmingham campaign, its Children's Crusade, and other Civil Rights Movement events and actions. Imagine the Project C campaign here, a direct challenge to laws limiting African Americans’ freedoms, and the protesters who took to Birmingham’s streets and were met with violent resistance from the police.
You can picture the images that shocked the nation: students attacked by water hoses and dogs, scenes tied to the Children's Crusade and to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. This monument spans an approximately five-block area of 18.25 acres in the Birmingham Civil Rights District near Downtown Birmingham and is administered by the National Park Service. Remember too the darker chapters recorded here: the bombing of the A.G. Gaston Motel, described as the movement’s headquarters motel, and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing—events that shaped the struggle preserved on these streets.
President Barack Obama signed a proclamation on January 12, 2017, designating half of the 36-acre Civil Rights District as a U.S. National Monument. That is what these five blocks, 18.25 acres wide, still carry within them.