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On the night of May 11, 1963, two bombs went off outside a small brick parsonage in the Ensley neighbourhood of Birmingham, Alabama. Inside were the Reverend A.D. King, his wife Naomi and their five children. All of them survived. The house, now a listed historic place, is part of the National Park Service's African American Civil Rights Network.
The minister
Alfred Daniel Williams King Sr. — A.D. King — was a minister, a civil rights activist and a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The house was the parsonage of the First Baptist Church of Ensley, whose congregation threw its weight behind the local movement.
In 1963 Birmingham's Black community launched the Birmingham Campaign, a mass campaign of direct action against the city's system of segregation. King was at the front of every major event it held that year. He did it at a time when white supremacists in Alabama — private citizens and state and local officials alike — used intimidation and violence against anyone who challenged segregation or called for full integration.
May 11, 1963
The bombs at the parsonage were an attempt on King's life, and they were not the only ones that night. A second bomb went off later at the A.G. Gaston Motel, the campaign's headquarters, where King's older brother, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other organisers were staying. The two attacks were clearly coordinated.
About 2,500 people poured into the streets in anger. A.D. King was among the Black leaders who worked to calm the crowd and send people home peacefully.
| Family at home | A.D. King; Naomi King; their children Alfred Daniel Jr., Alveda, Vernon, Derek and Darlene |
| Second bomb | A.G. Gaston Motel, the campaign's headquarters |
| Protest that night | nearly 2,500 people |
After
For the rest of the 1960s A.D. King stayed in the movement, in Birmingham and beyond, working alongside his brother and often travelling with him across the Deep South. He died in 1969.
| Year | |
|---|---|
| 1969 | A.D. King dies |
| 2005 | Omie R. Crockett Sr., a former deacon of First Baptist, and his wife Naomi buy the house and restore it |
| 2008 | Naomi Ruth Barber King, A.D. King's widow, founds the A.D. King Foundation in Atlanta to teach the history of the movement; the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places |
| September 2020 | the house joins the African American Civil Rights Network |
Naomi King spent the rest of her life making her husband's part in the movement better known.
The network
The African American Civil Rights Network was created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017 and is coordinated by the National Park Service. It links public and private places, facilities and programmes that together tell the story of the people and events of the civil rights movement and the sacrifices of those who fought segregation and discrimination.
Sources
Written from "A.D. King Home (Birmingham, Alabama)", National Park Service, African American Civil Rights Network; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The Associated Press photograph of the bombed house on the original page is not reproduced here.
Licenza: CC0 1.0 (pubblico dominio) · Tratto da www.nps.gov
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