Inside The Birmingham Community Where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Found Solace

By Ariel WorthyThe Birmingham Times

Jeff Drew remembers the first day he met the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who stayed with his family during visits to Birmingham in the midst of the civil rights movement.

Drew, who was 6 at the time, and some friends in the North Smithfield community — known as “Dynamite Hill” because it was the most bombed place in Birmingham — were playing a football game when a motorcade arrived. A line of long cars rolled down the “driveway at my dad’s house, and these men with tall hats and coats sat here on the flower bed” and watched a bunch of kids play football, Drew recalled.

King, who was rising in prominence, was among the group. It looked like a rescue operation, and the men meant business.“We saw the determination in their faces,” Drew, now 66, remembered. “They arrived together. They left together. They ate together. This was leadership of black America, and we were about to be rescued. They looked like a SWAT team without weapons coming into Birmingham to make this change. We felt liberated.”

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