One Hour With A Homeless Man: Birmingham, Alabama. September 16, 2008

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One Hour With A Homeless Man: Birmingham, Alabama. September 16, 2008

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When I woke up this morning it never crossed my mind that I would be spending one hour with a homeless man today.

That is why there are no photos. I was not prepared.

In fact, lately, I have been sick of writing.

All I wanted to do this morning when I awoke, was get away from this small town I am stuck in.

I took my kid to school, came home, threw my English racer in the back of my truck... and headed for Birmingham.

My plan was simple. This my day off, was just going to be a one day mini vacation.

I would go eat my favorite hamburgers (Milo's), get some CD's to burn from the Birmingham Library, then ride around downtown Birmingham on my bike until I felt like going home.

All went well for awhile. I saw a bike rider and asked him if the police were strict about bicycle helmets and riding on the sidewalks. He looked at me like I was crazy. He said "Do whatever you want to do, they don't care."

So I canned my helmet, fed the parking meter for two hours... then took off through downtown Birmingham. At first... I saw the usual. Pretty secretaries and suit and tie lawyers, businessmen and Southern Wall Street wannabees.

And no one tried to run over me.  I saw a cop on a bicycle and he looked at my helmetless gray head, and turned away. I was home free, free to fly through the streets.

Went down to the entertainment district and turned left on that road, and quickly learned that an English Racer was not built for cobblestone streets.  It was a butt bumpy few blocks. Very near the railroad tracks... where 40 years ago I had lost a Mustang transmission.

Then I turned back up into the city, and then left, trying to avoid the major traffic arteries. After a few blocks I realized I must be somewhere near where the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum was.  I hadn't been there in about five years.

I asked some black people at a bus stop where it was at, and one told me "Go down to 16th Street and take a right, and it will be a few blocks on your left."  I thanked him and cruised on.

16th Street. The location of the 16th Street Church, where four little girls had been killed by a bomb blast.  I had been in that church as well, about 5 years ago.

Riding a bike is a lot like floating through time and space.  And seeing the Civil Rights Museum up ahead on the left, was like returning to a place it felt I had been only a few moments ago.

On the right was Kelly Ingram Park... where the police had tried to keep the protesters bottled up back during the days of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Marches.  It hadn't worked.

I pulled into the Park and looked all around. Long distance at the various monuments. There were a couple of people in the park, but I paid them no attention. If someone says hi or hello to me, I will return the greeting in a friendly manner. Otherwise, I let everyone be, white, black, or whatever.

I rode through the two part monument, where the lettering is upside down, from the days when the young protesters told Bull Connor, we will turn your jail upside down.

I rode past the statues of the policeman almost letting his growling dog bite a young protester who appears to be falling over backwards - all three now frozen in metal.

And ahead and to the left I saw the 16th Street Church... where the four children had been killed. I thought about going over there, but instead, I turned to the right on the circle trail that goes through the park...

and saw a guy on a bicycle coming at me. He said, "Hey, want to trade bikes?" I said,'No, I just got this old one, it's used, but it seems to fit me well."

He said, "Have you been to the park before?"

I could feel a con coming on, but he was friendly about it, so I just answered, "Yeah, A few times."

He said, "Well you know over there is...." and he told me things I already knew. And I was trying to be polite but I wasn't interested.

Then he said, "And over there is the 16th Street church where the 4 little girls were killed."    

It was then when an old memory kicked in, and I decided to ask him about it. I said, "Didn't I hear something about... some of the graves were missing?"

He said, "They weren't missing. There were three girls there. Do you know why the fourth one wasn't buried there?"

I shook my head. He said, "Because the parents of the fourth little girl did not want her buried with the others."

I was taken aback by this. I sensed he was about to say something that he might not want repeated, so I told him that I sometimes write for the REPORTER.  It was my way of warning him not to say anything he might be sorry for later.

It didn't seem to bother him. He told me - and I am not quoting him because as I said, I was unprepared for this, had no pen or pencil or camera or anything - that it was a matter of  class among blacks back then... and that it is still similar.

He said that the one girl who had not been buried with the other three had not been a member of the 16th Street Church - that she had the bad luck of having been just been visiting on the day the KKK decided to bomb the church.

And that the dead girl had been a friend of Condoleeza Rice.

She had actually been a member of a much wealthier congregation.  And here he said, "We called them..." and he let out a string of five or six slurs that I had never heard before, ending with one I had heard before, "Oreos." 

I was stunned. I said, "Wait a minute."  He said, "Why?"

I said "Because you are telling me so much stuff so fast I am not going to be able to remember it. I may need to come back in a few weeks and let you tell me all this again."

He said, sure, that he was there (in the park) all the time. Then he added. "I'm homeless."

I let this pass by without commenting on it, quite frankly, because I didn't believe it. This guy was very articulate. Well mannered. Intelligent. And...  had his own mountain bike.

He said he was a Viet Nam vet and had been through a lot, lost his wife and kids, and that whenever I wanted to come back he'd be there... and show me everything I wanted to see.

Then he started talking to me about Mr. Gaston's importance to the area. He pointed out the Gaston Hotel in the near distance behind the Civil Rights Institute - and a light went off in my head. That is where Dr. King and his associates would meet and plan their moves against Bull Connor and the racists of  Birmingham.

I asked him if we could go over there. He said, sure and we rode across the block and down it a little and there it was.  I was astounded. The gates were locked, but I parked my bike and went to the iron gates and looked in.

It was if I was standing in history. For the place I was standing was almost exactly where the photographer had stood when he had taken a very famous shot of  Dr. King and Fred Shuttlesworth inside the hotel courtyard... before they went out to do battle... and before Shuttlesworth got squeezed out of the top power position in Birmingham... and had to settle to forever be known as following in Dr. King's path... whereas before he had been the number one mover in Birmingham.

Now, the courtyard was empty. All the windows were boarded up with plywood.  But all that history was there, still alive in my mind.

From there, that place I was looking at, Dr. King and his followers... went on to victory.

The homeless man told me, and over there was Gaston's funeral home. I couldn't turn away. I was still seeing inside that hotel courtyard where hard and unpopular, but successful decisions were made.

I told him, "I'm surprised this isn't a museum."  He told me three different groups had tried, but nothing had happened yet.  Just like back at the park, where the pumps at the fountain had been broke for three months.  And just like at the 16th Street Church, where a small memorial sign had just been erected... after 45 years of waiting.

He asked me if I wanted to see some more... and i told him yes.  I followed behind and we stopped at a sign.  He said that this was where the black business area was - half is gone now - and he told me many things about it... and then he said, "And over there by that building under the trees, is where I sleep."

That's when I said the stupidest thing I have ever said in my life. I shook my head and said, "You're lying about being homeless. How could somebody as smart as you are be homeless?"

That was the only time I saw him get a little upset. He said, "I told you what I have been through."

And then he rode on, with me following him. He stopped at a street. He said, This is it. This was the boundary. Black people could not cross this street unless it was to spend money at the white people's stores or to work for the white people.

I looked. There are no words for some one who realizes... this was real. Black people in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States of America once lived behind an invisible wall just as dangerous or more so than the Berlin Wall ever was in Germany.

To my left he pointed out an office building maybe twenty stories high.  He said at one time if was literally full of Black Doctors and Lawyers and other professional people. Now it was mostly empty, and a lot of the people renting in it who remained, where white people. 

Across the street, he pointed, was the Princess Theatre. I looked. It was a tall brick building with what appeared to be numerous fire escape stairs. They were not fire escape stairs.

Those stairs on the side, he said, were where we went up to the second floor after we bought tickets. We were not allowed to go in the front at all.

Then he looked to the East and said, and down that way is where my best friend was buried. He was the first black man to be buried in that white cemetary up that way, and we had to fight physically to get him in.

I asked him what he meant by that. He said that the KKK was waiting at the gate to stop them from entering and they had to push past them to get in to bury his friend. He said at that time, the police did the right thing, and let them in. And the clan was waiting for them when they came out as well, but it was too late then. The deed was done.

I asked him how far away it was, and he indicated it was about a mile.  I told him I'd like to go up there some day and see his friends final resting place.

He said sure. And again he said, I'm here all the time.

Heading back, I saw the Obama campaign headquarters.  I told him I wanted to go in there and talk to them awhile. He said fine, but didn't act like he wanted to go in.

Then was when he hit me up. He said, "Could you give me some money to get something to eat?"

I said sure, and I gave him a twenty dollar bill. It was the best money I ever spent. Just standing there at the gates of the Gaston Hotel and looking in were worth every penny.

He rode off after having told me if I couldn't find him in the park someday when I returned, where his favorite restauraunt nearby was.

I asked him if they had barbecue beef, and he said, no, mostly chicken plates.

I said ok, that I would find him in a few weeks. He said that he would see me before I saw him... and smiled.

I went in and talked to the two Obama workers for awhile, then decided to ride by the Greyhound Bus Station before I went home - where the freedom riders were beaten bloody all those years ago.

A young Spanish guy hanging out in front smiled and said to me in English, "Hey, give me that bicycle." I smiled back and told him in Spanish,  "No, neccissito quedarlo." (No, I need to keep it.)

The bus station was still open for business. I did not go in. I just looked in through the windows.

Then I rode my bike back to my truck, threw it in the back, and headed home.

I decided to go back home not on the Interstate, but on Highway 11. I did that for a reason, which I will tell you about shortly.

But just now, let me tell you what I saw on the way home, and then ask you a question.

Highway 11 leads North out of Birmingham into suburbs... and then into small towns that are feeling Birmingham's growth. Towns that used to be very little and country... now getting choked with commuters.

Towns like Trussville where space for condos and houses starting at $200,000 is at such a premium, that such houses are being built right along the side of a railroad track. Even towns like Argo where you can see beautiful houses near trailers.

And Springville, probably once one of the most Mayberry towns in Alabama... is now being "surburbafied." Even has an Italian Restaraunt now. What do you say Aunt Bee? Still feel like cooking? We have Chinese and Mexican Restaraunts now if you don't want Lasagna.

Driving through there I began to realize I would forget most of what I saw on my drive home. I saw an old pizza coupon paper in my floorboard, reached for it, found a pencil, and started writing things I saw.

Like the sign on the back of an SUV that said, "Living the Low Life."

And the trailer cast off head first into the trees on the side of the road like someone might cast off an old car.

And a sign on a church that said, "No Gas? Worship here."

And another trailer on the side of the road that looked like it had been stripped for "spare parts."

As well as the usual "Get Right With God" sign on a tin cross background. Maybe cut out of somebody's chicken house roof.

Then I saw two young Alabama teenage girls walking down Highway 11 in shorts too short, as in Black Snake Moan.

Then there was the McCain sign.

Then a guy driving a sports car... wearing a straw hat.

(Almost forgot - before I started back I stopped at a bookstore and saw a copy of a new Southern magazine, called GUN and GARDEN! One of the lead articles was about the Confederados who left and settled in Brazil. The author said you could buy clothes with rebel stuff on them, but good luck wearing them back home in the states!)

Then a sign, Fear of the Lord is the beginning of all Wisdom.

Then four old geezers (like myself) riding motorcycles.

And a beautiful field of those round bales of hay.

And a field full of cows with a few jackasses in it.

And now I was starting to get closer to home and saw a guy with no shirt on, talking on a cell phone while driving his pick-up truck.

And in Attalla, the next town to Gadsden, I saw broken out windows, and a cross someone had in the yard with a purple sash spread across it.

And a sign on a church that said "Have Lunch with Jesus."

And a topless club that used to be called "Bills" but now is called "Babes" whose owner I heard, has one of the finest mansions in town.

Then on the other side of this town, is the Civil War Centenial Park... which brings me to the reason I came home this way, on Highway 11.

It is because up ahead, on Highway 11, is where a white Civil Rights Activist Postal Worker was murdered in the sixties... as he walked along this highway with a protest sign.

I came this way... because I am a white Civil Rights Activist Postal Worker.

I turn off before I get to the place where he was killed.

I cross the interstate, go up Noccallula Mountain, see a few more McCain signs...

and then I am home.

And I wrote this, not knowing if the man I spent an hour with today is really homeless or not.

But being very glad I have a wonderful bed to sleep in tonight.

And that I was able to tell you what he told me.

And to ask you the question... Has Alabama changed?

You tell me.

The homeless man told me one other story. About my own town. Gadsden. He said in the fifties a black man from Birmingham was headed North and stopped in Gadsden to get gas. He was wealthy and well dressed and driving a nice car. Not only would they not pump his gas for him, one thing led to another and they beat him up and set him on fire and his car as well.

He finished the story by saying one of the three men died a horrible death of cancer, one had a child born limbless, and the other had a tragic life as well.

He was saying the sins of the fathers followed them, and sometimes fall upon the children as well.

I had never heard this story. Is it true?

I'm going to try to find out.

Thanks to the one hour I spent with a homeless man.

Will Bevis.

Gadsden, AL

September 16, 2008