BAMA! -- Part 2, the South...

Civil Rights Museum

On Friday, we drove south to Montgomery, the birthplace of the civil rights movement and original capital of the Confederacy.  We arrived under cloudy skies threatening to rain most of the day, but we were quickly enchanted with this friendly city...everyone said hello and greeted us as we walked by them. So nice! 

We started the day at the Visitor’s Center in the old Union Station and then headed to the Civil Rights Museum and Memorial Center, but not before a detour past a growing throng of demonstrators at the state capitol building. We soon discovered that we had stumbled into Montgomery on the 47^th anniversary of the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery (March, 1965). What a coincidence! 

 

Montgomery State Capitol and demonstrators

So our trip to the Civil Rights Museum was very well timed and we enjoyed learning about some of the violence that begat the movement and furthered the calls for justice and equality.  The fountain out front, designed by Maya Lin (designer of the Vietnam Memorial in DC), honors  40 men, women and children whose lives ended during the struggle between 1955 and 1968. It was very beautiful and poetic.

We next headed to lunch at Dreamland BBQ, an Alabama institution. This place was pure fun and good food. The host, Bert, who clearly has never met a stranger, greeted us and everyone else with handshakes and backslaps and shouts from across the restaurant. We were instantly in love with this place…and then the food arrived. Yikes, it was absolutely outstanding and habit-forming. We both enjoyed the sausage dogs (sausage links in hot dog buns, smothered in melted cheese, grilled onions, cole slaw and their secret recipe BBQ sauce…yummmm!!!) and some of their World Famous Banana Pudding. Obviously the secret ingredient in all of their recipes is crack because this stuff is totally addicting. 

From there we walked to the Rosa Parks Museum where we learned about the men and women who worked tirelessly for the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system. It was a fascinating exhibit, but the most interesting and informative part was an impromptu 10 minute discussion with a passionate museum worker about the history of the bus issue, especially the other women who refused to give up their seats long before Ms. Parks did. We learned quite a bit about Aurelia Browder and the other three women, whose lawsuit (Browder v. Gayle) against Montgomery Mayor William Gayle ended segregation in the bus system in Alabama. What a history lesson!

First White House of the Confederacy

From there we headed to the First White House of the Confederacy where Jefferson Davis and his family lived in the spring of 1861 before the capital of the Confederacy was moved to Richmond. It is a beautiful house across the street from the State Capitol Building, where Mr. Davis was sworn in as the Confederate president in 1861 and where the Selma to Montgomery march ended in 1965.

After the museum, we drove to Selma to see the Edmund Pettus Bridge. On our way to Selma, we noticed several very Southern features along the highway…lots and lots of mistletoe in the highest branches, Spanish moss hanging from bare trees as far as the eye could see, and mound after mound of red ant colonies. So cool!

The Edmund Pettus bridge is where peaceful civil marchers were beaten by Alabama state troopers on March 7, 1965, known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, when they tried to walk to Montgomery to confront the governor about voting rights.  After a second failed attempt, the Governor was ordered by a US District Court judge to provide the marchers protection with state troopers and national guardsmen. They completed their walk in 4 days on March 25, 1965, when 20,000 marchers arrived at the state capitol in Montgomery. This demonstration ultimately led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act a few months later. So much history!

We found Selma full of gorgeous Southern homes, and though many were in a sad state of disrepair, we could easily see their former splendor. We drove around the historic section of the town and found Sturdivant Hall, a beautiful example of a Greek Revival neoclassic antebellum mansion.  And it’s really pretty, too. 

We headed out of town as night began to fall and drove through some rather desolate areas of the countryside on our way back to the RV. We stopped in Centreville, Alabama, at a sad little restaurant for dinner and found the exact opposite of our lunch…a barely edible waste of money. Otherwise, what a fun day!