Civil rights sites in Birmingham, Ala.

School kids from Talladega, Ala., visit Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham. The park was a staging ground for large civil rights demonstrations in the Southern city 50 years ago. Statues and sculptures there commemorate that era and depict the city’s response, including jail time.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which was a rallying point during the civil rights era, is a key stop on a walking tour in Birmingham, Ala. The church was the site of a bombing in 1963 that left four young girls dead.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

Worshipers attend Easter Sunday services at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

The Rev. Arthur Price Jr., pastor of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., leads the congregation in a hymn during an Easter service.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

Worshipers enjoy an Easter play performed by the young people of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

A plaza area at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in the Alabama city. The institute is a 58,000-square-foot facility with exhibition space, meeting rooms, multimedia presentations and an extensive oral history collection with more than 500 interviews.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

German tourist Axel Knoche examines a display on racial advertising at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

A student takes a close look at a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood displayed at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

A couple -- barber Raymond Shine and hair stylist Sherry Lowe -- are married by the Rev. Charles Miller at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. The couple said their vows in front of the painting “School of Beauty, School of Culture” by Birmingham native Kerry James Marshall.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

At the Birmingham Museum of Art, Gail Cruz and her son Lorenzo, 7, examine a collection of images made by celebrated photographer Gordon Parks in Alabama in 1956.   (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

Steinunn Thorarinsdottir’s life-size iron figures dot an outdoor area at the Birmingham Museum of Art. The installation is titled “Horizons.”  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

Birmingham’s industrial side is celebrated in a cast-iron statue of Vulcan -- perhaps the world’s largest -- atop the Alabama city’s Red Mountain.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

Sloss Furnaces, which once produced pig iron, is now a national historic landmark in Birmingham, Ala.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

The view is splendid from the observation deck on the statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Ala.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)

The Tutwiler hotel has seen a lot of history in Birmingham, Ala. The original hotel was torn down in the 1970s, but with a boost from private and government grants, the Tutwiler family transformed the 1914 Ridgely Apartments into a new Tutwiler hotel downtown.  (Walt Stricklin / For The Times)