POWERGRAMS

7 Later that day, still not knowing the extent of the damage or of the deaths, Buford's father drove him and his mother by the church. "To describe what one felt, it would be like the world was coming to an end," Buford said. "As a young guy, I'm scared to death. I don't know if someone is going to try to blow us up, or if we're going to be attacked. "If you can imagine the uncertainty in your mind about what life would be like after this … I mean the anxiety, the stress and the degree of uncertainty about where your world would be. Who would kill four little girls with a bomb?" Journalist and author Frye Gaillard captured a city on the verge of racial warfare in his 2018 history of the 1960s, "A Hard Rain": "In Birmingham, it was too much. Riots erupted in the city that night. Black people were roaming the streets with their guns, others were throwing rocks at police, and in the course of the violence two more African American children were killed." Again, condemnation and revulsion rained down on Birmingham, and the outrage over the children's deaths helped lead to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial segregation in public places and outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. One of Buford's favorite memories related to the civil rights movement is of finally being able to enter the Alabama Theatre through the front door. Segregation for decades had prevented blacks from enjoying the stunning "Showplace of the South"; Buford remembers that at some point blacks were allowed to sit in the balcony separate from whites below. He said he was 14 or 15 years old when he walked through the front door for the first time. "It just blew my mind," he said. "It was like going to Disneyworld. You always wondered what it was like. To see it, it was even more impressive than I imagined it to be." Buford has watched that kind of progress and more in the decades since Birmingham's days as ground zero in the civil rights movement. "We've got a lot of work to do, but a lot of work has been done," he said. "Anybody who has studied history would know it ain't nothing like it was." Buford downplays the role he and his mother played in the movement. "We were not major players. The John Lewises, the people on the front lines, were the major players," he said. "We were supporting actors, and I was more of a supporting actor than my mom, because I was just having fun." Buford grew up in a neighborhood near Alabama Power's Corporate Headquarters and dreamed of working for the company one day. After working in the banking industry, he joined Alabama Power as an investigator in Corporate Security before moving to Governmental Affairs. Now, he can look out his office window and see Kelly Ingram Park, and the irony is not lost on him. "I would always dream about maybe having a job at the power company. I grew up four blocks from here. I would often pass by and wonder what it would be like to work there," he said. "I think this is a credit to the change that has occurred in Birmingham, the change that has occurred in the hearts of the people who live here." Buford today is director of Legislative Affairs and Compliance; he and his 94-year-old mother, Willie Mae Buford, talked about the civil rights movement on a bench at Kelly Ingram Park. Kelly Ingram Park is across the street from APC Headquarters. PHOTO COURTESY CHRIS PRUITT PHOTO BY PHIL FREE PHOTO BY MARK JERALD

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