In Room 30 of the A.G. Gaston Motel, on the second floor above the lobby, Martin Luther King Jr. and leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference planned what they called Project C. The C stood for confrontation. From that room in the spring of 1963, they coordinated the Birmingham campaign -- the series of marches, sit-ins, and boycotts that would provoke a violent police response so extreme it shocked the nation into action. On January 12, 2017, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation designating this cluster of buildings and green space as a U.S. National Monument, administered by the National Park Service. It is not a monument to victory. It is a monument to the cost of winning.
The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument spans approximately five blocks within the larger Birmingham Civil Rights District, which the city designated in 1992. But these are not ordinary city blocks. The 16th Street Baptist Church anchors the northwestern corner -- the staging ground for the Children's Crusade and the site of the September 15, 1963 bombing that killed four young girls. Across Sixth Avenue North, Kelly Ingram Park occupies the space where Bull Connor's officers turned fire hoses and police dogs on marching children in May 1963. The A.G. Gaston Motel sits to the east, the movement's operational headquarters, bombed in retaliation after the desegregation agreement was reached. St. Paul United Methodist Church, the Masonic Temple Building, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute complete the constellation. Each structure within the monument boundaries played a documented role in events that led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Arthur George Gaston built his motel in 1954 because Black travelers in Birmingham had almost nowhere to stay. Segregation meant white hotels were off-limits, and the few options available were substandard. Gaston, a self-made Black millionaire who built his fortune from insurance, construction, and banking, created a modern, comfortable motel on Fifth Avenue North. When the SCLC came to Birmingham in April 1963, Room 30 became command central. The first major march of the campaign stepped off from the motel's courtyard on April 6, heading toward city hall before police stopped the marchers at Kelly Ingram Park. After the May 10 desegregation agreement, segregationists bombed the motel in retaliation. Today the National Park Service owns the 0.88-acre Gaston Motel property, which serves as the monument's visitor center and anchor site.
Kelly Ingram Park is a four-acre rectangle of green between the 16th Street Baptist Church and the downtown commercial district. In the spring of 1963, it became a battlefield. When over a thousand students -- some as young as six -- marched out of the church on May 2, they crossed the park heading downtown. The next day, Bull Connor stationed fire trucks at the park's edges. High-pressure hoses knocked children off their feet and stripped bark from trees. German shepherds lunged at teenagers. Photographers and television crews recorded everything. The images that emerged from Kelly Ingram Park -- children tumbling under water pressure, dogs tearing at clothing -- circled the globe and generated the international outrage that made the status quo untenable. The park today contains sculptural memorials depicting these events, permanent markers of the violence that occurred on this grass.
President Obama's January 12, 2017 proclamation establishing the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument was one of three civil rights designations signed that same day. The Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Alabama, commemorates the site where a Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders was firebombed in 1961. The Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County, South Carolina, preserves sites connected to the post-Civil War effort to build an interracial democracy. Together, the three monuments represent a deliberate effort to embed the civil rights story into the National Park Service system -- to place it alongside battlefields, natural wonders, and presidential homes as part of the official American landscape. Birmingham's designation ensures that the city's role in the movement receives federal protection and interpretation.
The monument's official boundaries capture only a portion of Birmingham's civil rights geography. The historic Bethel Baptist Church in the Collegeville neighborhood, where Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth served as pastor, partners with the National Park Service but sits outside the designated area. Shuttlesworth's home was bombed on Christmas night 1956, and Bethel Baptist was bombed in 1958. The Fourth Avenue Historic District -- the commercial spine of Black Birmingham during segregation -- runs along the monument's edge. These places extend the story beyond the monument's legal footprint, reminding visitors that the movement was not confined to a few blocks. It was woven into the daily life of an entire city fighting for the right to sit at a lunch counter, ride a bus, or walk into a voting booth.
Located at 33.515°N, 86.815°W in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The monument spans approximately five blocks near the intersection of 16th Street and 6th Avenue North. Kelly Ingram Park is identifiable as a green rectangle amid the urban grid. The twin towers of the 16th Street Baptist Church are visible from lower altitudes on the park's northwest side. The broader downtown Birmingham skyline rises to the east. Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (KBHM) is approximately 5 miles northeast. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 feet AGL. The monument area is walkable from end to end in under 15 minutes.