History of BCRI (1980s)

1981 -1982 

Mayor Arrington appoints former mayor, David Vann, and UAB historian Horace Huntley to co-chair a Civil Rights Museum Study Committee.  The Committee recommends that the city incorporate a Board of Directors and acquire property for a museum.  The City of Birmingham begins acquiring property for a civil rights museum.

1983 - 1986 

Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr. appoints a Civil Rights Institute Task Force to create a mission statement and plan for the new facility.  Odessa Woolfolk, Director of the UAB Center for Urban Affairs, and Frank Young, Chairman of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, serve as co-chairs of the Task Force.  The Task Force crafts a mission statement and thematic program and guides the work of city-appointed architects and designers.  Birmingham citizens vote down a $65 million bond issue that includes $24 million for a science center and a civil rights museum, as well as renovations to the existing art museum.
 
1987 - 1988 

Civil Rights Institute Task Force approves schematic drawings and a program statement developed by the architectural firm Bond Ryder James and museum consultants, the American History Workshop.  Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr. authorizes plans for a Civil Rights Cultural District, including a renovated Kelly Ingram Park, a Jazz Hall of Fame in the historic Carver Theatre, a Civil Rights Institute and landscaping of public space around the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Grover Harrison Harrison, landscape architects, in association with Grover Mouton, redesigns Kelly Ingram Park to include sculptures depicting the Civil Rights Movement.
Voters again turn down a multi-purpose bond issue ($110 million) including $25 million for various museums.