The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute opened in November of nineteen ninety-two, across the street from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and diagonally opposite Kelly Ingram Park. Its opening was the culmination of a long effort by Birmingham civic leaders, historians, and civil rights veterans to build a permanent interpretive center at the geographic heart of what had happened in the city in nineteen sixty-three.

The Institute grew out of a broader effort by Birmingham civic leaders to reframe the city's identity. Birmingham had spent years trying to move past its reputation for racial violence. Vann and others argued that the way to do that was not to suppress the history but to document it comprehensively and present it to the public with full honesty.

The exhibition galleries are arranged chronologically, beginning with the era of segregation, moving through the resistance campaigns of the nineteen fifties and sixties, and continuing to the present. The Institute holds archival photographs, film footage, oral history recordings, and artifacts from the period, including an exhibit on the jail cell where Martin Luther King was held during the Birmingham campaign.

The Institute has served as a model for how a city can engage with its own most difficult history. It draws visitors from across the world and serves as the anchor of a broader Civil Rights District that includes the church, Kelly Ingram Park, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and several other landmarks within walking distance. It is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and has received numerous awards for the quality of its programming and exhibitions.