BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — For a long time, Joe Minter managed to share a yard with his wife, Hilda, their two sons and 100,000 of their neighbors. His scruffy three-bedroom house filled up most of a small city lot, just up the hill from Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. But somehow he made it work. When these souls began to cry out for their own lawn ornaments, however, he realized he would have to find more room. The sloping land to the south and west of Mr. Minter’s dooryard belonged to the two historically black graveyards called Grace Hill and Shadow Lawn. “We are in the presence of about 100,000 African ancestors,” Mr. Minter will tell visitors who drop by on a Sunday morning. These are the emancipated slaves and farmers and steelworkers who made Birmingham: the muscle that built the “Magic City.” The dead weren’t going anywhere, but the rest of the neighborhood was thinning out, Mrs. Minter said. Some homeowners died off; others drove north and never came back. So the Minters began … [Read more...] about Scrap-Iron Elegy
