Ann Beard Grundy
Ann Beard Grundy was born only a few months after her father, Rev. Luke Beard, accepted the post as pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, moving his growing family to Birmingham in 1945. Until their father’s sudden death in 1960, Ann and her brothers and sisters lived in the parsonage, right next to the church and steps away from Birmingham’s thriving Black business district. In their busy home the Beards hosted nationally-known musicians, performers, church leaders, and civil rights activists, who had few options for accommodations, and the family welcomed parishioners and neighbors in need.
In an expansive oral history interview, Ann Beard Grundy recalled the supportive family and community that raised her. In one of the segments we publish now, Ann speaks of the time, when she was 4 years old, that Bull Connor threw her father in jail for refusing to cancel a planned meeting of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. Because their mother protected her children from learning where their father was during this absence, it wasn’t until Ann was an adult that she learned from her older brother about the court case on this incident.
In another clip, Ann speaks of the Black radio stations that broadcast some of her father’s sermons and of the celebrity DJs, who were “like little gods in our lives.” Peering from an upstairs window of the parsonage, Ann could see two Black radio stations, including WENN, where renowned DJ Paul “Tall Paul” White would later give a shoutout to Ann’s brother Luke Beard, who had been his classmate at Parker High.