As I write this, snow is falling heavily. Snow doesn’t fall like rain, loud and aggressive. Snow, it seems, falls mute from some quiet past.

This snow fall finds me remembering a crucial time in Birmingham’s past; a time of police dogs and fire hoses and contorted faces that scream to us from the silence of black and white photographs.

My wife and I were eating at The Bright Star a week ago when a group of South Carolina fans in town for the PapaJohns.Com Bowl were seated next to us. We struck up a conversation and they wanted to know what to see in Birmingham.

I told them about Vulcan Park, the museums and about Sloss Furnace, that wonderful rusty monument to our industrial origin. I told them about some restaurants and McWane Center and the Alabama Theater. I even told them that while at The Bright Star they should order the crab claws to start and the bread pudding to finish.

But I didn’t tell them to visit the Civil Rights Institute or Kelly Ingram Park or the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It was on our drive home that I realized the oversight and instantly regretted it.

Those sites, I think, speak to our city’s true nature. The Civil Rights Institute documents not only Birmingham’s struggle with equality, but the ongoing struggle in which our nation is engaged. Kelly Ingram Park is filled with beautiful art that tells the story of bravery and redemption for a city and its people. And, of course, the newly renovated Sixteenth Street Baptist Church stands as a monument to the terrible sacrifice required of that time.

No visitor to -- or resident of -- Birmingham should miss those sites. They are unique to us, yet their message is universal. They stand as a testament to the strength and promise of the people of our city.

So I sit and watch the snow fall on the grass outside my office, and I know it falls too on the statues of Kelly Ingram Park and on the steps of the hallowed ground of that Baptist Church where sacrifice helped change the country.