Mamie King-Chalmers, Detroiter and civil rights advocate, dies at 81

Mamie King-Chalmers never sugarcoated for her children, she told the blunt truth.

When she told them stories of growing up as a Black person in Birmingham, Alabama, her daughter Lasuria Allman said, she was straightforward: They were treated like dogs. For it was telling God's honest truth that would equip her children, and later grandchildren, with the tools necessary for navigating life in the United States as Black people.

"She was confident, outspoken, very blunt, and to the point," Allman said. "She didn't play; everything that she said she was serious about. She was a serious-type lady.

"My mother was a very, very strong woman. She was a fighter."

King-Chalmers, a longtime Detroiter and steadfast civil rights advocate, died Tuesday at the age of 81. She is one of three people captured in a famous Life magazine photo getting blasted by a firehose in Birmingham in 1963, a snapshot of her life's legacy.

King-Chalmers was born on June 19, 1941, in Birmingham to Mattie Marlowe and Berry King Sr., she was the second oldest of nine children. Growing up in the Jim Crow-era South fueled King-Chalmers' fire to push against the racism for a better future.

"You had the bombings, rapes, lynchings, beatings, attacks, all kinds of things that was going on at that time and it was so many injustices that had went on for so long to a blind eye," said Allman, 56, of Detroit. "The younger people were the ones who couldn't take it no more because the adults became complacent."

King-Chalmers came to Detroit in 1973 with her husband, Raymond Charles Gill, who she married in 1963. Together, they had five children. She later married Rev. Walter Sele Chalmers, with whom she had three children. Gill passed in 2004, and Chalmers died in February.

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Martin Luther King Jr. once described Birmingham as the most segregated city in the country, and King-Chalmers never hid the reality of living in that city from her children. She and her siblings were fed up and were willing to step up for the sake of change — no matter the consequences.

The story behind the iconic Life magazine photo is ingrained in Allman's mind from the number of times her mother recounted it to her and her siblings. King-Chalmers caught the attention of Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor, a strict segregationist who served as Birmingham's commissioner of public safety, due to her last name making him suspect that she was related to Martin Luther King, which she was not.

On that fateful day on May 17, 1963, King-Chalmers was protesting at a park with her siblings and friends, prompting police intervention. When Connor spotted her, he sent dogs to chase her and she ran for cover in front of a locked doctor's office where Connor ordered the fire department to blast water at her. She was joined by two Black men who tried to take some of the impact away from her, Allman said.

"She told us the water felt like bricks were being hurled at her," Allman said.

The courage of King-Chalmers and her peers catapulted the Civil Rights Movement into the national spotlight and changed the course of history in the United States.

"It's an honor to be her child," Allman said.

Allman said King-Chalmers would always end her speaking engagements with the same quote:

"My life has always been a struggle, and I will continue to struggle until the work is done, or I am done."

Visitations will be hosted at the O.H. Pye III Funeral Home at 17600 Plymouth Road in Detroit on Friday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The funeral will take place Saturday at the Shrine of the Black Madonna at 7625 Linwood St. at 11 a.m. A memorial will be held at the Charles H. Wright Museum on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. All events are open to the public.

Contact Miriam Marini: mmarini@freepress.com