Bessemer Super Highway
A tour from Birmingham, headed West
Sights along the way:
AG Gaston Motel: bombed one night, May 1963, Dr. King having left his room.
The fairgrounds, featuring KiddieLand Amusement Park, segregated, boycotted, and then closed by city officials, 1963.
Central Park Theatre, home to Asa Carter’s Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, 1956–7, near the Chicken-in-The-Rough restaurant.
Midfield Beauty Salon, where Country legend Tammy Wynette once worked and occasionally sang, 1964.
K-Mart, where my family shopped most Friday nights and I bought my first 45 record.
Super Sandwich Shop, where white Bessemer High School students ate BBQ with slaw after school and big games through the 1960s.
WVOK-AM The Mighty 690, 50,000 watts of Top 40, integrated hits until the mid-1970s, when it went Country.
Auto Movies #1, where Carmen Baby and other X-Rated gems ran behind a semi-visible screen.
The Holiday Inn, where my family once spent a month, Jan 1961, after half of our house was destroyed in a fire set by our next-door neighbors.
The Bama Drive-In, which showed five horror movies in a night, featuring They Eat Your Flesh, and They Suck Your…
