Day Nineteen – 3rd November

We’re in Montgomery, state capital of Alabama, and today is going to be a bit of a civil rights trail. After a hotel supplied breakfast (a very nice buffet type), we got in the car and headed to our first destination, the Civil Rights memorial in downtown Montgomery. The memorial consists of two main sections, one is a building housing a museum and stories of people killed doing civil rights work during the 50’s and 60’s, and the second is two sculptures outside the building. The names of the 40 people are engraved on a flat disc, over which water flows, in front of a wall with a phrase from one of Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches, “...until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. ...", and water also flows down this wall. The two sculptures are designed by Maya Lin, who’s also responsible for the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C.

The entry cost into the museum is very reasonable, $6, and we had to subject our bags to a security screening and walk through a detector to go into the museum proper. We enter into a circular room that has the names and images of those killed on walls that are covered in images of the civil rights movement. Screens dotted around the room allow you to pick a name or an event and hear more information. The stories are pretty terrible to read, so many killed randomly and violently, and makes one realise just what was involved in trying to bring an end to segregation in the south.

We then sat through a small film about the center, and then walked through to a room which outlines some hate crimes that occurred just within the last couple of decades, and then into a large room where names are scrolling down a huge wall in various sizes and fonts. These are the names of people who’ve visited the site and have pledged to try & do something to fight intolerance no matter what form it takes, and naturally Deb and I added our names to the list.

Then we exited the museum and looked at the sculptures and took some pictures, and then walked to our next destination, the Rosa Parks library and museum.

Downtown Montgomery was very quiet and there wasn’t much activity, and little in the ways of cafes or retail outlets. The streets are laid out in a grid pattern so common to U.S towns and cities and it only took a few minutes to get to our destination.

Rosa Parks is the woman credited with being the mother of the modern civil rights movement. Her story starts in December 1955 when she refused an order to relinquish her seat for a white passenger. This was not the first time a woman had refused (six women over the preceding few years had also refused and been arrested), and after continuing to refuse, police were called and she was arrested. However this time a number of things had come together, including a young pastor just starting out at the local church, whose name was Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr.  In very short time, three days, a boycott of the Montgomery bus service was organized and underway, and this boycott lasted over a year until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional, and MLK had become the most recognizable leader of the movement. Although segregation remained in many other aspects of southern life, this was the first of many hard fought victories and Rosa Parks was its instigator (albeit unwillingly). This museum is in two separate buildings. The first part starts in a large room that contains a timeline of the events and several bio’s of significant people, and downstairs is a “time travel bus”, more aimed at the younger person, that plays some re-enactments of significant moments in the civil rights struggle from just before the civil war (we were compelled to sit through this but would happily miss it).

The second part focuses on the movement in Montgomery after Rosa had been arrested and how things were organized and played out during the boycott.

All in all it was a very good and sobering look at segregated life during this time, and how hard it must have been to even form some kind of token resistance when black people had no empowerment almost of any kind.

It was another lovely hot day, so after this museum we decided to try & find whatever passed for a Montgomery CBD or main center. We drove down to the Visitors center, located in the main railway station near the river’s edge (also where the “waterfront attractions” were supposed to be located. However the water front consisted of a small wharf on a bend in the Alabama river, and the attractions were nothing except a river boat tied up alongside. We’d seen a caravan acting as a café with outdoor seats so decided to stop there for a bite. After lunch we wandered up the street a bit but there still was no sign of any retail area so we decided to jump in the car and head to our next stop. On the way back to the car I stopped at a statute of Hank Williams to take a picture, and a woman who was stopped at the lights offered to get out and take my picture next to the stature. I declined, but that was an example of how friendly people have been down here. Almost every day we are asked where we are from and people show great interest.

The next stop was the Dexter Parsonage museum, which is the house that Martin Luther King and his family lived in when he started preaching at the Dexter church. This celebrates Martin Luther King’s involvement in the church and the civil rights movement at the time of the bus boycott. He had just started being a preacher at the church when all these events ramped up, and he found himself leading the campaign and thrust into the limelight. Perhaps a prime example of his oratory power was when the house was bombed while his family was in the house but he was out. Word quickly spread amongst the community that this had happened and a crowd quickly gathered at his house, mad and wanting to take some revenge. He arrived at the house and talked the crowd down, and persuaded them to all leave and go home peacefully.

Our guide was a very elderly woman who was a member of the church (then and now) while MLK was the preacher there and so had a direct connection with him and his wife. She was a delight and after showing us some photos and playing a quick video of the history of the house, the Dexter church and it’s preachers, she then took us next door and walked us through the house and talked through various points in time and history while the Kings were staying there. Some of the furniture was original as well though some items, like the bedroom furniture, had to be replaced as the Kings took things like that with them when they left to go to another city.

While we were in the kitchen, she played us one of MLK’s speeches and it was a very moving speech, and one that showed the power he had to inspire people to action.

That was the end of a pretty full day so it was back to the Hotel and then “Waffle House” across the road from our hotel for dinner. They do a mean cheese melt sandwich with either steak or beef patty or a hash brown, so at $20 US for dinner or two, it will do us! Crossing the road to get to the waffle house is a bit of a dicey prospect though. These service areas are not designed for pedestrians or walking so after walking over grass verges we then have to try & cross a four lane highway ( looking in the wrong directions for traffic each time!) there & back. But the melts are worth it.