Randall Jimerson, far left with siblings Ann, center, baby Mark, Sue and Paul, rear, in early 1963. Photo credit: Special
By Chanda Temple
Imagine you’re the son of a white pastor who’s moved his family from Virginia to Alabama in 1961 to work in Birmingham’s civil rights movement.
You support your father’s cause and his push for equality. But some of those determined to keep things the way they’ve always been in segregated Birmingham, don’t like change. And they tell you so.
“As a young teenager, I’d answer the phone (at the house). …there would be either silence or heavy breathing or ‘Your daddy is gonna be six feet under,’ ” recalled Randall Jimerson.
Such words were hard for Jimerson to hear. But he knew his father, the Rev. Norman C. “Jim” Jimerson, was on the right course, a course to help others and to bring about change for the better in Birmingham.