If you stand on the steps of the state Capitol, where Jefferson Davis stood in 1861 to take the oath of office as president of the Confederate States of America, you can hardly avoid seeing Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. assumed the mantle of leadership in the civil-rights movement.
Few cities can boast such a dramatic intersection of historical currents.
For many years, the Great Seal of the City of Montgomery paid tribute to only one stream. Since 2002, it has embraced both currents.
Civil War to Civil Rights
The present seal consists of a gold circle bearing the words, “City of Montgomery Great Seal.” Within that circle is a white circle with the words, “Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.”
At the center is a white six-pointed star against a red circle. Within the star are the words, “Cradle of the Confederacy.” The star is a replica of the one that marks the spot on the Capitol steps where Davis was inaugurated.
It was in Montgomery that the Confederate leaders first convened in 1861 to draft a constitution and elect a president. The Alabama State Capitol became the first Capitol of the Confederacy.
It was in Montgomery that Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat to a white passenger, thus triggering the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. And it was from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church that a young King galvanized black America into action against racial discrimination.
Rosa Parks’ Bus Passed Over
The committee that chose the design for the city seal passed over one depicting Bus 2857 -- the one on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Bob Bonn, who designed the bus seal,
also submitted one that depicted a white hand grasping a black hand, flanked by scrolls that read "Cradle of the Confederacy" and "Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement."
Bonn, who is white, is former administrative director of historic properties relating to Old Alabama Town, Montgomery's historic district.
The committee voted unanimously to go with the design submitted by Gloria Mann, a retired vocational-education teacher.
Honoring Her Heritage
Mann wanted to be sure the new seal didn't eliminate or subordinate the reference to the "Cradle of the Confederacy."
"I want 'Cradle of the Confederacy' to stay there," she said on the eve of the acceptance of her design. "That's part of my heritage. ... I want to share it.”
Willie Cook, the black City Council member who chaired the three-man committee, expressed sentiments similar to Mann's.
"It starts with the acceptance that we have a dual heritage," he said over breakfast in Montgomery. "One does not detract from the other; one enhances the other."
The committee also included Councilmen Charles Jinright and Charles Smith, both white.
The new design, said Smith, pays tribute to "the two pivotal things in our history, and it's time to recognize and to celebrate them, not to try to put one ahead of the other."
Sons of Confederate Veterans Approves
In a letter to Cook, commander Joel Lee Williams of the Thomas Goode Jones Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, wrote:
"That Montgomery, Alabama, is the cradle of the Confederacy is ... an historical fact of which we are proud and which we celebrate.
"Equally undeniable is the fact that Montgomery is also the birthplace of the civil rights movement. This too is a truth of which our organization is proud and which we celebrate."
Source: Information for this article was obtained from interviews and from attendance at a Montgomery City Council meeting.
Gene Owens - Gene Owens is a veteran of more than 50 years of newspaper writing. At his retirement in 2003 from the Press-Register in Mobile, Ala., the ...
