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Sun Ra and the Birmingham Album: The Magic City (1965)
By 1965, Sun Ra was long gone from Birmingham, Alabama. In a previous post, I’ve talked about his life in Birmingham and the following rejection of his hometown. During his early career, Sun Ra wanted nothing to do with the Southern city and lied to interviewers about where he was from. Why then did he record an album about Birmingham titled The Magic City in 1965? In this blog post, I’ll get into the music of Sun Ra and its relationship to Birmingham in this groundbreaking album.
Why 1965?
To understand The Magic City’s historical context, we have to back up to 1963. Birmingham underwent some major changes during that year that captured the attention of the world. In the spring, Black citizens in Birmingham organized a boycott and sit-ins, marching through the streets and demanding an end to Jim Crow segregation laws. Birmingham’s Black churches, like Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, were organizational hubs for marches and served to galvanize the Black community’s efforts towards equality. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited Birmingham and was arrested for marching. During that stay in jail, he penned a draft of the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Birmingham’s police, led by Commissioner Bull Conner, responded to protests violently, attacking protestors with high-powered fire hoses and aggressive dogs. White opposers to the civil rights efforts bombed Black businesses and residences.
Despite that violent opposition, by May of 1963 the protests were successful in ending legal segregation in the city. However, as the school year started, many white Birmingham citizens vehemently opposed newly enforced school integration efforts, protesting violently and loudly. On September 15, 1963, four men, who were white supremacists and KKK members, detonated dynamite at the back of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, murdering four little girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair. (For more info about 1963 Birmingham, check out this summary from the King Institute.)
In the aftershocks, several musicians wrote music in response the bombing. Today’s blog post focuses on just one of those pieces: Sun Ra’s The Magic City album, recorded in September of 1965 in New York City…
