Miriam McClendon was born in 1949 in the Wenonah mining camp,
near Birmingham, Alabama. She grew up under strict segregation;
separate facilities for black and whites, from water fountains
to classrooms, were sanctioned by law. Moreover, segregation was
often enforced with violence and police brutality. During the
Civil Rights movement, activists were beaten and sometimes
murdered. Local police offered no protection. In fact, the city
was nicknamed "Bombingham" for the numerous bomb attacks on
African Americans. McClendon's family discussed race very little
at home, but in high school McClendon attended a civil rights
mass meeting with her mother and embraced the struggle for
racial equality. Speeches by civil rights leaders such as James
Bevel and Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the unequal status
of blacks and whites and inspired her to take action, even
though she was only 14. On May 2, 1963, civil rights leaders led
Wenonah High School students on a seven-mile march to the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Churc