According to Teaching Tolerance, a program of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Birmingham Pledge is a grassroots effort to recognize the worth of every individual, by making a personal, daily commitment to remove prejudice from our own lives and to treat all people with dignity and respect.”
I will treat all people with dignity and respect; and I will strive daily to honor this pledge, knowing that the world will be a better place because of my effort.
New friends meant new learning about Birmingham’s racial past, followed by involvement with the Community Affairs Committee (CAC), a group he co-chaired in 1997 with African-American attorney Louis Willie III.
Encouraged by Willie and the other members of the CAC to share The Birmingham Pledge, Rotch did so at the 1998 annual MLK Unity Breakfast.
Here are just a few of the more famous people who have signed the pledge:
“[South African] Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African prime minister F. W. DeKlerk, former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Birmingham bombing survivor Carolyn McKinstry, author Harper Lee, General Colin L. Powell, [former Alabama] Governor Bob Riley, and many others.”
