It wasn’t my intention to cover a ceremony unveiling the Civil Rights Trail in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Instead, I was assigned to work on a story about Mayor Larry Langford’s announcement that the city of Birmingham would refund civil fines and penalties levied by the city almost 50 years ago during the civil rights movement. But when I called the Mayor’s office last week, hoping to track down anyone who would file for such a refund, I was told many of them would be at this historic ceremony at the historic center of Birmingham’s Civil Right’s Battle.
We arrived at Kelly Ingram Park about a half hour before the ceremony started. City staff were still busy setting up the speaker’s podium and testing microphones as guests began to fill rows of chairs that were staged near the pavilion in the middle of the park. When I introduced myself to Mayor Langford, he immediately connected me with a man who was simply sitting among the guests in the audience. His name was Melvin J. Short. He was probably in his mid-60’s and I noticed he held an envelope in his hand. As I talked to Mr. Short about why he was here for the trail unveiling, I learned that simple business-sized envelope held a piece of history — a real-life documentation of the struggle for basic human rights in Birmingham four decades ago. He was born and raised here and remembered clearly what it was like living under the Jim Crow Laws of the segregated South.
“Back in the sixties you couldn’t eat in the restaurant, you had to go to the back door. You couldn’t ride in the front of the bus, in other words you had no rights,” Short said.
Short was known as a “foot soldier” – average citizens who enlisted themselves in the battle to end discrimination, racial segregation and violence. The strategy was to commit acts of civil disobedience, like drinking water from a whites-only drinking fountain, boldly walking into the front of a segregated restaurant and ordering food or taking a seat in the front of a city bus. The idea was to overwhelm the jails and law enforcement resources, a strategy that proved to be very effective. For black residents in 1960’s Birmingham, these simple acts of daily life meant being arrested and fined.
“I had signed up at the church to be arrested because we knew we were going to get arrested…to go to city hall and rink some white water,” Short said, referring to the whites only drinking fountains. “What we wanted was equal rights, our rights were being violated. So that’s what we were going to jail for.”
Short said he spent a total of 12 days in jail for two separate instances of defying Jim Crow laws. Alongside others who “signed up” to be thrown in jail, Short was fined $48, a hefty amount for a young man who only brought home $30 per week. He even had the pink slip of paper dated April 26, 1966 inside that envelope, proving his arrest and the fine he paid to the court clerk. After 43 years, Melvin Short will get his $48 back. Mayor Langford says refunding the fines to people like Short is long overdue. But for the mayor, it’s not a pardon for the people like Short who marched and struggled for their rights. It’s a pardon for the city who he says wronged so many people so long ago. “
The City is sorry for what it did because it can never be a crime to fight for human decency and human rights,” Langford says. “Healing is not easy and sometimes two words can do more to heal a nation than anything else on the planet. And those two words are simply ‘I’m Sorry.’” Short wasn’t aware that he was entitled a refund of the civil fines he paid in 1966. He says he will fill out forms and wait for his $48 check from the city. The mayor says all requests need to be verified before money is refunded. However, in Short’s case, having a 43 year old receipt is hard to deny.
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Melvin Short Shows a Receipt from a Jail Fine he Paid in 1966 During a Civil Rights Protest
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Birmingham, AL Mayor Larry Langford Ordered Refunds for Civil Rights Fines
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The Birmingham City Jail Log Shows an Arrest of Martin L. King
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The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth is an Icon in the Struggle for Civil Rights