alabamahistoricaltours

Former Slave Link to Pratt Subject of History Program

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 12:12:41 GMT

He was Alabama’s master bridge builder, but former slave Horace King may have combined his talent with Prattville industrialist Daniel Pratt on other projects.

By Jim Plott

Montgomery Advertiser

King, noted for his architecture in Alabama and west Georgia, will be discussed at 7 p.m. Thursday by Richard Bailey, a research and writing specialist at Maxwell Air Force Base.

The program, titled, “Spanning the Racial Divide: Horace King, Bridge Builder,” is also part of Alabama Humanities Foundation Speakers Bureau and will include King’s seldom-recognized recognition at improved race relations.

King lived in Alabama before the Civil War.

He is credited with building a bridge that spanned the Chattahoochee River between Columbus, Ga., and Phenix City, but his work’ also brought him to central Alabama.

“It’s a possibility that he and Daniel Pratt worked together,” said Tyrone Crawley, vice president of the heritage association. Pratt is the industrial entrpreneur who founded Prattville.

There is speculation that Pratt and King may have combined their talents to design the stairs at the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery.

One link of King to Autauga County is the construction of a bridge over the Coosa River at Wetumpka.

Richard Bailey placed his portrait on permanent display at the state capitol in February 2017, a first in Alabama history. Newspaper article is available.

Cleveland Court Apartments

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 12:09:02 GMT

Cleveland Court Apartments features a historic marker, which describes Rosa L. Parks’ arrest and subsequent journey to becoming the “mother of the civil rights movement.”

The building that houses apartments 620-638 of this Montgomery Housing Authority apartment complex was Rosa and Raymond Parks’ Montgomery residence when Rosa Parks brought about the Montgomery bus boycott by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. The family moved to Detroit in 1957.

The red brick complex was built by the U.S. Housing Administration in the early 1940s and also bears historic markers from the state of Alabama and the city of Montgomery. Being on the National Register makes the building eligible for federal funding and requires review of any federally funded project that would alter or destroy the structure.

Home of E.D. Nixon 647 Clinton St.

Nixon was the NAACP official known as “The Father of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

This house was bombed in February 1956 in reaction to the boycott. Nixon founded the local chapter of the NAACP and was a leader and organizer of the bus boycott. He also led protests against discrimination in voting, education and employment. The state of Alabama historic marker was placed in front of Nixon’s home in 1986.

Mt. Zion AME Zion

(also known as Varick Chapel) 467 Holt St.

In this church, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed, and it was here that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was named its president.

The neighborhood surrounding Rosa L. Parks Avenue is rich in history, but even some residents aren’t aware of the landmarks in the area, all of them full of Civil Rights-era significance. Unless otherwise stated, these sites are open for curbside viewing only.

Holt Street Baptist Church

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 11:57:16 GMT

Rosa L. Parks and E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, arrive at court March 19, 1956, in Montgomery. Parks and Nixon lived in the Cleveland Avenue neighborhood. Cleveland Avenue was renamed Rosa L. Parks Avenue.

They Too Call Alabama Home: African-American Profiles, 1800-1999

Holt Street Baptist Church, a couple of blocks to the west of Rosa L. Parks Avenue, features a historic marker that explains the important role the church played in the Montgomery bus boycott and the struggle for civil rights.

An estimated 5,000 Montgomery residents met here on Dec. 5, 1955, to launch the Montgomery bus boycott. The church, which has a historic marker from the state, is always open for curbside viewing, but tours of the church are available by appointment.

Neighborhood at a Crossroads

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 12:36:31 GMT

istoric Area looks to Return to Past Glory

By Robin Bradley Litchfield, Montgomery Advertiser

Drive through the neighborhood along Rosa L. Parks Avenue, and you’ll catch a glimpse every now and then of what was one of Montgomery’s most prominent areas for African Americans from the 1940s to the early ’70s.

But the area along Rosa L. Parks Avenue, which before its name was changed to honor the civil rights leader who lived there was called Cleveland Avenue, is just not the same.

Now visitors only glimpse the former glory of the neighborhood, which encompasses about 40 blocks from Mildred Street to Fleming Road. Vestiges of its former grandeur peek out from behind overgrown yards, tattered awnings, run down rental properties and boarded-up businesses and houses.

Older black families, many of their names prominent in the city’s history, bemoan some of the younger, newer inhabitants who do not share the working-class values that helped shape these streets.

“I’ve lived there 65 years — back then, those (West Jeff Davis and Cleveland avenues) were the best streets for blacks,” said 96-year-old Robert L. Clayton. “I had been married a short time, and wanted a home. Back then, it was a quiet neighborhood, a good place to raise a family, nothing like it is now.”

Montgomery historian Richard Bailey said the area was an important one for blacks in Montgomery.

“It was the heart of the black community,” Bailey said, referring to a pocket bordered by Fairview Avenue to the south and West Jeff Davis to the north.

“One of the distinguishing features of that single street is that you had blue-collar as well as white-collar residents. There were many professionals, educators, doctors and business owners who lived on that street.”

Many of the Montgomery bus boycott’s leaders lived here. Parks lived in a Cleveland Court apartment, and local NAACP branch president E.D. Nixon lived a few blocks away on Clinton Street.

Originally, in the 1850s, the street was called the Plank Road, said historian Mary Ann Neeley.

“At that time, they were building the plank road going south, and it would eventually run all the way to Mobile,” she said. But the project got so expensive, it didn’t make it beyond Lowndes County.

Then in October 1887, President Cleveland and his wife came to town.

“The Montgomery papers were ecstatic about his coming. The Montgomery Advertiser’s headline was ‘Our Cleveland is coming,’ ” she said. “Montgomery was a strong Democratic town, and the state, too, for the most part. He was the first Democratic president to visit the Capital City, so it was a major event.”

The day of his visit, the Plank Road was changed to Cleveland Avenue, a name which lasted about 100 years. The next name change was in March 1986, when it was changed to honor Rosa L. Parks, considered the mother of the civil rights movement.

Longtime residents still have trouble now and then not calling it Cleveland Avenue. Even retired educator Leon Williams admitted that sometimes he slips and uses the former name.

He and his late wife, Yvonne Williams, were drawn to the neighborhood in early 1948. They had just married when they purchased their house on Cleveland Avenue.

“We needed a place to live, and my wife liked it, so we decided to try to purchase it. It was much different back then. There were quite a few successful people, in terms of professionals,” said Williams, who plans to remain in his home of more than 56 years.

But by the early ’70s, as the interstate highway system cut through the area, things began to change. Bailey said. The neighborhood shifted into a downward spiral that has only worsened.

Longtime resident Georgette Norman, who grew up on the street and then returned after moving away for a number of years, said when she was growing up, there was a strong sense of community.

“It was lively, very vibrant, a community,” she said. “There were lots of young people and families, some extended families with grandmothers or aunts. Your next-door neighbor might be a sister or a brother. There was a sense of belonging and nurturing — not just from your specific household. Your neighbors could discipline you, and you listened to them.”

And there were a number of successful businesses owned by neighborhood people, such businesses as Luther Oliver’s garage, and Shaw’s Bakery, which residents smile as they recalled “the best sweet rolls in the world.”

And, Bailey said, there was the Elks Club, which still stands near the West Jeff Davis end of the street.

“The Elks Club was one of the centerpieces of old Cleveland Avenue. Many professional black people would frequent the place on weekends. There was a lot of black entertainment,” he said. “Others could go there for some of the finest food. Many, many black cooks got their start at the Elks Club, including George Gregory, who’s not around anymore.”

But when it came to entertaining, the Elks Club wasn’t the only game in town.

Many of the professionals and business owners were members of civic clubs, which blended community service and socializing.

Williams and his late wife were members of such clubs. For 49 years he has been active in the Cosmopolitans, one of the prominent black social and service clubs in the city. His wife was a Cosmopolite, the women’s counterpart.

“There was a lot of entertaining. As a matter of fact, they (the clubs) met on a monthly basis. They also chose projects in the community to work on,” Williams said.

Norman was too young to participate in one of the adult clubs, but she does remember seeing ladies dressed in their finest socializing at different houses around the neighborhood. Occasionally, it was her parents’ turn to play hosts.

A number of women were active in one of the dozen or so Montgomery City Federation of Women’s Club groups. The late Tessie Oliver Nixon (no relation to civil rights activist E.D. Nixon) was active in the Ten Times One Is Ten Club, and she often entertained in her stately white home between Clinton and Early streets.

Everybody in the community knew Nixon and her husband, Alfred Nixon, and their pet peacocks.

Other prominent residents included numerous Alabama State University professors, including the late Edgar E. Evans and Zelia Stephens Evans, the woman in whose honor the university’s early childhood center is named.

Myrtis Clayton Ramsey, daughter of Clayton and the late Janie Lowe Clayton, said living along the street back then — the only home she’s ever known — was so different.

“People cared about each other, and they cared about the way their homes and yards looked,” said Ramsey, who chose to marry in her parents’ back yard 39 years ago.

Her father agreed and said, “As bad as it looks now, it looked equally good in the heyday.”

So what happened to this thriving community? To the manicured lawns, well-kept homes, thriving businesses?

Helen Oliver, whose late husband, Luther Oliver, took over his family’s garage in 1945 and ran it until his death in 1993, said things began to change as children grew up and moved away. Then, as residents began to age and pass away, things were never the same.

Clayton said, “Back then, you could sit out on your porch step, and nobody would bother you, no riffraff back in those days.”

Norman said looking at her neighborhood’s decline saddens her.

“But I think the part that gets me is the ‘ladies of the evening.’ That’s more of a concern to me because of the kind of activity it brings with it,” she said. “And occasionally, you’ll hear gunshots.”

It also saddens her to think of countless neighborhood playmates who grew up, went away to study and never came back.

“I would love to see the houses that are vacant sold to families as opposed to just sitting there,” she said. “The houses should be sold to people who will take pride in their homes, the way it was for so long.”

Norman is not alone.

Williams and others along the street haven’t given up.

“I am still hopeful that the spirit of the old neighborhood will be relived,” he said. “Those who own property should take a little pride in what they have. Once upon a time, there was a lot of pride on this street, and people were very much concerned in what was going on. It can happen again.”

Montgomery Advertiser, October 24, 2004

Three Legends Who Called Alabama Home

Fri, 01 Mar 2002 12:39:14 GMT

They Too Call Alabama Home: African-American Profiles, 1800-1999

When ASU alumnus Dr. Richard Bailey (1971,1972) was asked to recount the stories of influential African-American Alabamians during Black History Month, he was able to draw from a ready resource – his reference book of 393 profiles titled “They Too Call Alabama Home: African-American Profiles, 1800-1999.” The Montgomery historian’s Feb. 19 lecture focused on three worthy subjects — Margaret Walker, W.C. Handy and Nat King Cole.

“I want people to think of Alabama when they think of Walker, Handy and Cole,” said Bailey. “Even though these great people left the state, they still have ties here. Their achievements were simply magnificent.”

Richard Bailey is a historian and the author of the book, “They Too Call Alabama Home: African American Profiles, 1800-1998. “

ASU Today, March 2002

History of Centennial Hill comes to life at Sunday lecture

Mon, 18 Feb 2002 13:09:28 GMT

The history and people of one of Montgomery’s oldest neighborhoods were the focus of a special Sunday lecture.

Richard Bailey presented the lecture “An Afternoon in Centennial Hill” Sunday at the Church of the Good Shepherd on South Jackson Street.

The event was sponsored by the Landmarks Foundation and the Centennial Hill Neighborhood Association.

Several present and former residents were on hand to share firsthand knowledge of the community.

Civil rights pioneer Johnnie Carr and state Sen. Charles Langford live in the community.

Centennial Hill is near the downtown area and includes many notable landmarks, including Alabama State University and Booker T. Washington Magnet High School.

Marker Tells Stories of Slave Trade, Freedom

Wed, 02 Jan 2002 13:18:47 GMT

History converges at square

By Ken L. Spear, Montgomery Advertiser

A historic marker unveiled in the town square on Dexter Tuesday took a crowd of Montgomerians back to more than a century ago.

The planting of the new marker at Court Square Fountain nurtures two stories: One side designates the location of the city’s slave market. Its flipside denotes the 1866 parade to mark the first time Alabamians had the opportunity to observe the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Montgomery is arguably the most historic city in America,” said Councilman Tracy Larkin. While commemorating the past, it can sometimes be “painful and embarrassing,” but there is value in studying all history.”

The life-changing events of decades gone by merely form a triangle near Court Square, ceremony participants learned. Slaves shipped from the Alabama River were traded along with mules and other livestock, historians noted. In this area lies a marker summarizing the story about the telegram to fire on Fort Sumter, sparking the Civil War. And this spot also marks where Rosa Parks boarded the bus in December 1955 and gave birth to the Montgomery bus boycott.

Organizers say this marker highlights one of the most momentous occasions in history and future research on families. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared in the Emancipation Proclamation all persons held as slaves were free. When news arrived to the Capital City, a parade through town followed.

Holland Thompson, a pioneering black Holland Thompson, a pioneering black alderman and state legislator during that period, then told the crowd to “show by good conduct, industry and fidelity, that the year 1866 was a year of jubilee, instead of insurrection, ” the marker read.

Thompson also told the mass of people to acquire land, homes and education for their children, the marker read.

“The slave marker is important because genealogists usually take pride in knowing where slaves were sold so that they Oh trace their lineage@ more effectively,” said historian, Rich Bailey. “Montgomery was a major slave market in the antebellum South.”

For 16,year-old Raymond Barnes, his understanding of slavery is more of a textbook issue and stories passed down through generations.

“It is good not to have somebody ruling over you. We’re free and can do whatever we want,” said Raymond as he entered St. Jude Catholic Church for an Emancipation Proclamation celebration. “I’m happy we don’t have to go through that stuff.”

Robert James, a past president of the Emancipation Association of Montgomery, said the past can’t be overlooked.

“Those of us who had relatives who came through those times can only think about what they went through,” James said, “and thank God it won’t happen again.”

___________________________

Ken L Spear, who covers education for the Montgomery Advertiser, can be reached at 240-0122 or fax at 261-1521. Email him at kspear@montgomeryadvertiser.com .

MONTGOMERY SLAVE MARKETS

On the reverse of the historic marker unveiled Tuesday is a designation of Montgomery’s slave market. It states:

The city’s slave market was at the Artesian Basin (Court Square). Slaves of all ages were auctioned, along with land and livestock, standing in line to be inspected. Public posters advertised sales and included gender, approximate age, first name (slaves did not have last names), skill, price, complexion and owner’s name. In the 1850s, able field hands brought $1,500; skilled artisans $3,000. In 1859, the city had seven auctioneers and four slave depots; one at Market Street (Dexter Avenue) and Lawrence, another at the corner of Perry and Monroe, and two on Market between Lawrence and McDonough.

Photos by Mickey Welsh Staff

Originally Published: Montgomery Advertiser

2 January 2002

They Too Call Alabama Home

Wed, 14 Feb 2001 13:21:00 GMT

Students get lesson in state’s Black History

By CHRIS BURROUGHS, Eagle Reporter

Jesse Owens, Nat King Cole, Joe Louis.

They are names that have become famous in America and, in the world. Historian Dr. Richard Bailey was in Sumiton Tuesday to tell an audience of students that these famous figures were not only African-Americans, but Alabamians.

Bailey was the featured speaker at the African-American History Convocation hosted by Bevill State Community College. Students from West Jefferson School, Dora High School and Sumiton Christian School were treated to a program of music and speeches from Bailey and Dr. Ethel Hall, vice-president of the Alabama State Board of Education.

Bailey is from Montgomery and has a Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts from Alabama State University, a Master of Arts from Atlanta University and a Doctor of Philosophy from Kansas State University. He was appointed by former Gov. George Wallace to the DeSoto Commission, a group retracing the route of Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto in Alabama.

“This is a big event inside our college,” said college president Dr. Harold Wade. “Part of our mission, part of the role of our college is to teach people how to work together, live together and respect each other as we live together in this country.”

Hall said she thought of a story to tell, the students of how; important African–American history is to history in general. She told of a young boy who asked his mother what the world would be like if there were no black people. The mother told her son to get ready and she would try to show him. As he got ready and went out in the world, he began to discover things like shoes, combs, elevators, and light bulbs were missing. All of these items, or the things that create them, were invented by black people.

“If you ever wonder what the world would be like without black people, it’s pretty plain to see that you would, be in the dark,” Hall said.

Bailey came to the podium and talked to the students about people from Alabama, both famous and some not-so-famous…

Mountain Eagle, Jasper AL

February 14, 2001

Birmingham Civil Rights Museum

Sun, 04 Feb 2001 13:24:59 GMT

Historic Program and Book Signing for They Too Call Alabama Home: African American Profiles, 1800-1998

Impact Touches Many Areas

Sat, 19 Jun 1999 13:28:30 GMT

Blacks have long contributed to state

By Richard Bailey

Jesse Owens, Nat King Cole, Joe Louis.

African-Americans with Alabama ties have rendered an invaluable service to the state and nation.

In military affairs, “Major” Jeffreys fought with Andrew Jackson in Mobile during the War of 1812. Alamo Joe, also known as Joe Travis, was a slave of William Barrett Travis and the sole male survivor at the Alamo. James H. Alston, later of Tuskegee, was a drummer in the Mexican War. John Carraway of Mobile wrote ” Colored Volunteers,” the most popular tune of black troops during the Civil War.

In the 20th century, Charles “Chief” Anderson trained blacks at Moton Field for air combat. Trying to rescue his mates at Pearl Harbor, Julius Ellsberry of Birmingham became the first Alabama black to die in World War II. William A. Campbell, of the 99th Fighter Squadron, was the first black to bomb enemy territory in the same war.

Showing political savvy, Reconstruction blacks helped to establish the Alabama Republican Party, churches, schools, banks, and labor unions. Benjamin S. Turner,

James Thomas Rapier, and Jeremiah Haralson were elected to Congress. Elected in 1882, W. P. Williams of Meridianville was the last black statewide officeholder of the 19th century.

Thomas Reed and Fred D. Gray reintroduced blacks to statewide officeholding in 1970 – nearly 88 years after Williams’ election – under the banner of the Democratic Party. They continued to advance the welfare of blacks. Earl F. Hilliard is the sole black congressman of the 20th century.

In education, Emerson Institute of Mobile became the state’s first black college in 1865. William Savery was the guiding force behind the establishment of Talladega College in 1867, while William James Edwards founded Snow Hill Institute in 1893.

At Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington’s faculty reads like a who’s who of academia: Warren Logan handled finance; Monroe Work headed historical research; Cleve Abbott’s sport teams were nearly unstoppable; George Washington Carver traveled uncharted paths in scientific research; Thomas Campbell and Clinton J. Calloway advanced the farm extension program; Clement Richardson excelled in literature; Emmett J. Scott was Washington’s secretary until he was called to work in Washington; and Robert Park, a white faculty member, helped to establish social work at the University of Chicago after leaving Tuskegee.

Such names as Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Ralph D. Abernathy helped to make Alabama the civil rights capital of the world. Adding to this list the names of Joseph Lowery, Arthur Shores, Rosa Parks, Albert Turner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Fred D. Reese, E. D. Nixon, Gwendolyn Patton, and Bob Mants will cause readers to assume that having Alabama ties is a prerequisite for work in civil rights. Alabama blacks have held their own in athletics, too. Joe Louis and Jesse Owens excelled at the time when blacks had few national heroes.

Through the talents of Satchel Paige, Henry Aaron, Cleon Jones, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Bo Jackson, Alabama has been well represented in baseball. The state has two heavyweight champions in Louis and Evander Holyfield.

Alabama blacks sang with the Temptations and the Drifters. Prominent entertainers have included Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Big Mamma Thornton, W. C. Handy, and Wilson Pickett.

Percy L. Julian and Levi Watkins Jr. have continued the pace established in science by Carver. Andrew Jackson Beard invented the railroad coupler, and Isaac Hathaway was one of the nation’s most celebrated sculptors.

In literature, Margaret Walker Alexander, Jim Haskins, and Sonia Sanchez have written for wide audiences.

When Alabama builds on the record of these achievers, the future becomes as bright as the past.

Richard Bailey is a historian and the author of the book, “They Too Call Alabama Home: African American Profiles, 1800-1998. “

Montgomery Advertiser, 1999

Past Present Meet At Crossroads

Fri, 01 Dec 1995 13:34:54 GMT

The intersection of West Jeff Davis and Rosa L. Parks avenues has modern problems.

People from out of town comment on it or see it as an ironic geographic statement — the Civil War meeting the civil rights movement on a street corner. A recent Associated Press story about Montgomery called the intersection of Rosa L. Parks Avenue and West Jeff Davis Avenue “one of the city’s great ironies.”

Cleveland Avenue (named for President Grover Cleveland) was renamed Rosa L. Parks Avenue in March 1986. Thus began the peaceful coexistence of the president of the Confederacy and the woman who ignited the civil rights movement.

To the people who live here, though, it’s just an intersection.

But it’s anything but peaceful.

This crossroads and the part of Rosa L. Parks Avenue that extends from it to Mill Street, once known as the “dividing line” between black and white sections is just a city block. It’s facing challenges like a lot of other neighborhoods, but it’s steeped in a history of civil rights-era events but also of modern-day crime and poverty that sets it apart.

It’s just a stretch of road. But it gives a glimpse of what this section of Montgomery once was, as well as what it has become.

At one time there were grocery stores on three of the four corners of Cleveland and West Jeff Davis avenues. Through the years, just one of those stores survived — Moseley Grocery. There are no big-chain grocery stores around here, just Moseley, and a few other mom-and-pop stores like the Holt Street Superette.

Moseley’s is kind of a merged convenience store, all-purpose grocery, and social gathering place for area residents, many of whom walk here from their homes.

Debbie Green started working at Moseley’s 20 years ago and now is a Moseley’s manager. Her work has given her a window to the area’s decline.

“It would be great to see an improvement in the housing around here,” she said. “There is property that people just don’t take care of.”

Indeed, there are rundown houses, abandoned lots and long-shuttered businesses surrounded by overgrown weeds, immobile cars and other junk.

But there are exceptions. Jessie Mae Smith’s prim white house with its neatly groomed, tiny front lawn is one of them.

“I’ve always taken care of my home,” said Smith, 78. But beyond her fenced-off, minuscule square of property, there’s little she can do.

Across the street is Moseley’s parking lot, so friendly during the day but a different place altogether after it closes for the night. Just because the store has closed doesn’t mean business has stopped.

Just about every night, Smith sees men in cars pick up prostitutes, depositing them later in the same location. It can start as early as dusk, when she’s sitting on her front porch talking on the phone, and sometimes it goes on all night. But dangers can loom even before sunset.

Gunshots aren’t rare. Smith said they’re pretty much nightly background noise. It’s O.K., as long as they sound like they’re coming from two or three streets over, not that close to home.

Smith only has lived here for three years but already has seen a steady stream of short-term neighbors taking their leave.

Lillian Peterson Hill, 72, was born in this neighborhood and lived here until 1977, when she and her husband moved farther east in the city.

“I can tell you why it declined: The interstate was being built, and the way the city rezoned made the property values go down very, very low,” Hill said. “They bought up all those houses and the surrounding area on the west side, and they made the Cleveland Avenue area a truck route, which it hadn’t been before. That was the beginning of our decline there.”

Until the 1980s, when conditions got perilous, Hill’s late mother, Johnailene Tarver Wilson, was one of a handful of holdouts, Wilson refused to leave the home her father had paid off in 1905, where she’d raised her children and watched her, grandchildren grow up. Soon after Wilson moved out, moving in with her daughter, the vacant “home house” was ransacked. Vandals took everything, from the mantle to the clawfoot bathtub. The city eventually tore the house down.

Now, it’s just a vacant lot on Rosa L. Parks Avenue, one of a growing number where no one is rebuilding.

Down the road, past a building dubbing itself the “Holy Ghost Headquarters” and a shut-down barbecue joint is Cleveland Court Apartments. The building that houses apartments 620-638 was Rosa Parks’ intended destination when she boarded the bus the fateful night of Dec. 1, 1995. As the former home of a civil rights icon, it’s made the National Register of Historic Places.

For the last 30 years or so, it also has served as a hotbed of crime.

Gonzales Hargrove lives in Cleveland Court. He clearly remembers the night he, his girlfriend and her child hit the living room floor to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of a gunfight just outside their door.

But like many of the other residents on Rosa L. Parks Avenue, Hargrove said that in recent years, things have gotten better.

There’s a new black iron fence surrounding the complex, bicycle cops regularly circling the area and frequent meetings at the community center where residents can voice their concerns and actually be optimistic about someone taking action.

But some things seem to never change.

Every hour of the day, young men hang out in front of the complex, just down from the “No Loitering” sign. Hargrove has no proof, but he’s sure they’re up to “something illegal.”

Penrose Mosley, 56, who lived in Cleveland Court as a child, remembers teachers, lawyers, judges and politicians as his neighbors.

“It was a really nice place to live, down through the late ’70s and early ’80s,” Mosley said, full of what were called.”nice homes,” with good upstanding families who all knew and looked out for one another. Then came drugs, and prostitution as an outgrowth of those drugs.

“By the time crack moved in, it was really bad,” he said.

People here can detail what Hargrove calls the “unsavory” aspects all day. But despite that, there’s an optimism that suggests things will improve.

Just not right now.

“I have hope I always have hope that it may iprove,” Hill said of her childhood neighborhood, which she barely can recognize now, “but not anytime soon.”

King Unified Thousands

Sun, 17 Jan 1993 13:37:25 GMT

Churches Provided Network Supporting King

Dr. Bailey comments on the movement the Rev. Dr. King led

Montgomery Advertiser, January 17, 1993

Timeout for History

Tue, 01 Dec 1992 13:39:11 GMT

Students from the Montgomery County public schools’ Time Out program listen to historian Richard Bailey at the spot where Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for not giving up her seat on a city bus to a white man. The students were taking part Sunday in the Montgomery Community Network’s African-American Tour of historical sites.

Montgomery Advertiser, December 1, 1992