Suffering for Suffrage

Today we continued what we began at Dexter Avenue yesterday—immersing ourselves in the history of Civil Rights Movement events that took place in 1960s Alabama.  Our plan for the day was to retrace the path of the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, albeit in reverse order.

KING'S STATEMENT INSPIRED MAYA LIN'S USE OF WATER IN HER DESIGN.

Before leaving Montgomery, we stopped at the Civil Rights Memorial Center, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center located across the street from SPLC offices.  Conceived by Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Wall,  the memorial features a black granite table engraved with the names of 41 martyrs who died in the struggle for equal rights in the U.S.  Water flows in a steady stream across the top of the table and down a nearby curved granite wall etched with Martin Luther King's paraphrase of a Biblical passage in his 'I Have a Dream' speech:  "We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

A GROUP OF SCHOOL STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT THE STRUGGLE FOR BASIC RIGHTS.

Inside the adjacent Memorial Center, the SPLC pursues its educational mission.  Exhibits relate the stories of individual martyrs of various races, ethnicities, and religions who lost their lives in the name of freedom and equality.  The center also includes a classroom and theater for learning activities and a Wall of Tolerance exhibit which invites visitors to add their names to the list of those who have pledged to stand against hatred, intolerance and injustice.

INDIVIDUALS WHO TAKE THE PLEDGE CAN ADD THEIR NAMES TO THE WALL.  (Photo from SPLC web site)

Visiting the memorial set an appropriately solemn tone for our mission.  The march from Selma to Montgomery took place from March 21 to 25, 1965, but momentum began to build two weeks before, on a day which became known as "Bloody Sunday."  On March 7, some 600 peaceful demonstrators walked slowly up the incline of the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River in Selma.  Their intention was to march to Montgomery to protest the systematic denial of voting rights to African Americans in Alabama and the death of a young demonstrator fatally shot defending his grandmother in a Marion, Alabama voting rights protest two weeks before.

JOHN LEWIS (foreground) IS BEATEN BY A STATE TROOPER.  (Photo by AP)

When they reached the apex of the bridge, marchers were met with a brutal response from state troopers and local police blocking their way from crossing the bridge.  Nightsticks, cattle prods, whips, and tear gas were wielded to force the marchers to retreat.  Incredibly, leaders of the march were able to convince the protesters to hold fast to the principle of nonviolence, even in the heat of abuse.  As Dr. King and other organizers hoped, the images of law enforcement officers savagely attacking unresisting marchers were widely publicized and generated sympathy for their cause, helping to awaken America and the rest of the world to the indignities and injustices of racial discrimination in the Deep South.

With support for the movement growing, federal authorities stepped in when state officials continued to deny protesters their right to peacefully assemble.  A federal judge lifted an injunction against the proposed Selma to Montgomery march, and President Johnson sent national guard and military troops to protect the marchers along the route.
Our journey began where the march ended—at the Alabama State Capitol.  Speakers stood on the back of a truck after state troopers barred all marchers from the steps of the capitol.  On the last day, protestors marched five miles to reach the capitol from their fourth and last overnight campsite.
Just a block before the capitol, the demonstrators passed Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a bastion of support for the civil rights movement and the former church home of Dr. King.  Under his leadership, the church had been the headquarters of the 1955 bus boycott, and in 1965 it served as the final staging area for the rally at the capitol.
Two miles outside the city limits and five from the capitol, the City of St. Jude—a Catholic educational, medical and religious complex—hosted the protesters on their last camp out on day 4.  Sleeping tents, food stations and first aid operations were set up on the 36-acre campus to serve the needs of the weary and disheveled marchers.  They had walked 16 miles that day, nine miles the day before, and 16 on the day before that.
Campsites for days 3 and 2 are, as they were then, on private property.  Between them is a memorial for Viola Liuzzo, a Michigan mother of five, who drove South to support the nonviolent march.  As she was driving fellow protesters to the Montgomery airport after the event, she was fatally shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Just west of the campsite for day 2 is the Lowndes Interpretive Center.  The museum exhibits illuminate events of the march and tell the story of a "Tent City" established at that spot later in 1965 after white landowners evicted sharecroppers for attempting to register to vote.
Administered by the National Park Service, the Lowndes Center is one of three planned for the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.  The Selma museum has opened but is being expanded, and the Montgomery unit is under construction on the campus of historically black Alabama State University.
Arriving in Selma, we were moved by the sight of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a structure we've heard about so many times in our lives.  Fittingly with what occurred there, it is named for a Confederate general who became Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War.
The National Park Service's Selma Interpretive Center is located in an historic building just across Water Street from the base of the bridge where so many walked into the fires of hell.  A small exhibit hall offers insights into the events that happened there, and construction is underway to expand the center's space and installations.
Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the midst of the Carver Homes community hosted large meetings during the early days of the voting rights campaign.  It served as the staging point for rallies to the courthouse and for the march to Montgomery.  The church was locked up on this Friday afternoon, but lively sounds of friends greeting friends and neighbors laughing their way into the weekend surrounded us as we checked out the exterior.
Our attempt to visit the National Voting Rights Museum was also in vain.  Located at the foot of the Edmund Pettis Bridge where marchers were beaten back across on Bloody Sunday, the center is open only Monday through Thursday, perhaps targeting school groups as their primary audience.  Across the street from the museum is the Civil Rights Memorial Park along the river bank.  Our efforts to locate the letterbox hidden in the park suggest it has disappeared.

Driving the route between Selma and Montgomery has been on our list for some time.  Visiting the places where Americans suffered such bigotry and brutality just for trying to exercise their right to vote stirred deep emotions and reminded us that these acts of tremendous courage and sacrifice must not be forgotten.

From Selma, we drove 50 miles west on US-80 to Demopolis, AL, where we decided to spend the night.  The city has some interesting historical sights to explore tomorrow and we couldn't resist an opportunity to visit our nephew and his family who live just outside town.

FRIDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2016
    •  Started in:  Montgomery, AL
    •  Ended in:  Demopolis, AL
    •  Miles driven:  140  (985 total)
    •  Weather:  45° to 78°, clear
    •  Letterboxes:  none today
    •  Walked:  2.4 miles (14.2 total)
    •  States:  AL
    •  Counties:  6
    •  Towns:  9
    •  Gas:  $2.399/gallon (premium) in Selma, AL
    •  Cows!  62 (D) to 41 (K)
    •  Hay bales:  11,834
    •  Trees with Spanish moss:  9,412


Altruistic Allies:  Visiting the memorial in Montgomery today, we learned a bit about Morris Dees, the respected co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Resourceful even as a youngster, Dees began his first entrepreneurial venture while still a law student.  A partnership between him and a fellow student, Fuller and Dees Marketing Group sold fundraising products and produced specialty publications.  The business was so successful both partners became millionaires before age 30.  Eventually both left the business to pursue higher callings.  Dees put his energy into the SPLC, and Millard Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity.