Word: birmingham
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Virgil Ware, 13, soared down a lonely stretch of road outside Birmingham, Ala., perched on the handlebars of his brother's bicycle, he was happily unaware of the carnage downtown. It was Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963. At 10:22 that morning, four black girls had been killed by a dynamite bomb set by the Ku Klux Klan at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The church was a focal point of Birmingham's civil rights turmoil that year, but that unrest hadn't touched Virgil and his coal-mining family, who lived in a modest, all-black suburb and rarely even...
Larry Joe Sims, 16, an Eagle Scout at Birmingham's all-white Phillips High School, wasn't preoccupied with the civil rights movement either. His family quietly sympathized with blacks' efforts to eat at regular lunch counters, attend integrated schools and vote without hindrance. His father, a manager at a Sears store, privately scorned Eugene (Bull) Connor, the police commissioner who turned fire hoses and attack dogs on black demonstrators, some as young as 7. Still, if the Simses lamented the injustices, they didn't challenge them. As a teen, Sims had girls, his guitar and the Beach Boys...
...wasn't. Instead, Virgil Ware became the sixth and final black person to be killed in Birmingham that Sunday. (Another youth had been shot in the back by police after he threw rocks to protest the church bombing.) Virgil was the last civil rights casualty of the summer of '63--when the defining social movement of 20th century America became a national concern and not just a Southern one. Network television brought the season's atrocities into U.S. living rooms along with the triumphs, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech...
...1960s, while Epps was touring with the Harvard Glee Club, the group traveled to perform in locales where blacks were unwelcome. On one occasion in 1965, Peabody Professor of Music Elliot Forbes ’40 reportedly received bomb threats because of plans for Epps to participate in a Birmingham, Ala., concert. Epps was “quietly, deeply upset” when the Glee Club performed without him at the show, Glee Club Secretary William White ’65 said at the time...
...teacher - who mentioned it to Simon Rattle. Rattle was curious to meet the boy who wanted to conduct Schönberg, and invited him to a rehearsal with his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He even let him conduct a bit. Impressed by Harding's knowledge and his confidence, Rattle took Harding on as an assistant and began recommending the young man everywhere. Before long, Harding was plucked from university at 18 by Claudio Abbado, then chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who wanted Harding to assist him. He made his full debut with the Berliners at 21. Now living...