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By Mark Jerald
Ron Buford’s view of the ongoing protests around the nation against racism and social injustice has its roots among the trees of Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park. More than five decades ago, during the civil rights movement’s Children’s Crusade, a 10-year-old Buford dodged from tree to tree to avoid the high-powered fire hoses that stripped the bark from those trees.
Now, Buford, director of Legislative Affairs and Compliance at Alabama Power, watches events across the country triggered by the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in May. He wants to see the protests lead to finishing the civil rights movement’s effort in the 1950s and ’60s to defeat racism.
“My hope now is that this movement which is upon us is probably going to be the best chance to make a difference,” says Buford, whose mother took him to civil rights events in the 1960s. “I think throughout the communities and around the country and world, people are beginning to understand that a change is needed, a positive change is needed. I think the world has an opportunity to take advantage of it, and if it’s not taken advantage of, I don’t know that we’ll ever get it back again.”
