Jailed Children (Children's March)-- Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham AL - Smithsonian Art Inventory Sculptures on Waymarking.com

As a parent, one more horrifying aspect of the Birmingham struggle for civil rights was the decision by Bull Connor, Birmingham's infamous Police Commissioner (and later Mayor), to jail young black children in the Birmingham City Jail for the "crime" of trying to attend white schools.

This powerful sculpture by James Drake is again into pieces one on either side of the sidewalk. The east side sculpture is of 2 black children standing in the doorway of school. On the steps a written the words "I ain't afraid of your jail."

On the west side, is a representation of a barred window in the Birmingham city jail, which gives the visitor a sense of what it must've been like to look through barred windows at the outside world simply for trying to go to school 9 years after schools were officially (but not practically) desegregated in the United States after the Brown decision.

Visitors who walk around the sculpture off of the sidewalk if they look to the east they're looking from the outside through the cell bars at schoolchildren in the jail. If they walk off the sidewalk to the east and local west they look at the back of the schoolchildren looking through the jail cell window.

This is an amazing piece of political art, in the fitting civil rights memorial to the sacrifices of the children during the Children's March.

TITLE: Jailed Children (Children's March) ARTIST(S): James Drake DATE: 1993 MEDIUM: Bronze and steel CONTROL NUMBER: IAS AL000018 Direct Link to the Individual Listing in the Smithsonian Art Inventory: [Web Link] PHYSICAL LOCATION: Kelly Ingram Park 6th Ave N at 16th St S DIFFERENCES NOTED BETWEEN THE INVENTORY LISTING AND YOUR OBSERVATIONS AND RESEARCH: None

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