We had planned to spend the day wandering around Montgomery, the State capital of Alabama. One of the things we were most interested in was the role Montgomery played in the 1950s and 60s in the Civil Rights movement.Fortunately we were once again blessed with splendid weather. The downtown area of Montgomery is splendid in white, with grand government buildings decorated with palladium pillars. We walked up to the Montgomery Capitol building onto the very steps where Jefferson Davis was declared the first president of the Confederacy in February 1861. One of the things that continues to amaze us in these dangerous times is how easy it is to enter major public buildings in the US – although I remember having to go through metal detectors when entering the Department of Motor Vehicles in Elizabethtown, New York (which is a tiny place in upstate New York!). We walk into the foyer of the impressive looking Capitol building where we are greeted by an elderly gentleman who welcomes visitors to the building – he shows us the impressive three storey, cantilevered spiral staircase. The acoustics in this foyer, as a result of the staircase, are amazing and he shows Jack and Emily how the sound is amplified from one corner of the room to the other.
On climbing the stairs you enter a room with the main rotunda which has a magnificent painted ceiling and murals on the walls depicting historical events in the State’s history. Off the rotunda are 2 historical meeting rooms where the Alabama senate had met in days past. These rooms had been preserved to reflect their original glory.Leaving the Capitol building we set off to discover more of Montgomery’s more recent history. In 1955 a seamstress and Civil Rights activist Mrs Rosa Parks got onto a Montgomery bus. When asked to give up her seat for a white passenger who had boarded the bus after her she refused and was subsequently arrested. This led to a series of events, marshalled by the local churches and activist groups, which resulted in a boycott of the Montgomery buses. The leader of the protest group was a young local pastor of the DexterAvenue, 2nd Baptist Church, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The bus boycott lasted a year before the courts ruled segregation on public buses was illegal – this was a seminal moment in the US Civil Right movement history and led to many of the remaining segregation laws being made illegal over the next two decades. We started our exploration of the Montgomery Civil Rights at the Rosa Parks Museum – the main section was closed but fortunately there is an adjoining children’s section. This museum has a “ride” disguised as a time travelling Montgomery bus – which takes you back in time through the period mid 1800s to 1955. The whole thing was a wonderful experience – and afterwards you get to go to a resources room full of materials such as the police records from the bus boycott period. Jack and Emily were allowed to reproduce data for use in their project work.......what a learning experience going through all the catalogues of original materials!
We still had some time left in the day so we visited the Civil Rights Monument. The Memorial is dedicated to those, both black and white, who died in the struggle for equal rights for African Americans. It gives profiles of individuals – most of whom are not household names and were simply people who cared. The startling thing is the number of deaths at the direct hands of the authorities; many others fell to the murderous actions of white supremacists. This is a very powerful experience. A movie tells the story of some of these people, -particularly moving is the story of Emmett Till who was
murdered for calling a white shop assistant “baby”. He was murdered and his body disfigured and dumped in a river. His mother returned the body to her hometown of Chicago and put her son’s remains on display in a open casket so people could see what was happening to innocent African Americans. This event had a profound effect on the black community and sparked the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. At the end of the museum is a Wall of Tolerance – this a huge electronic display upon which you can pledge to be committed to tolerance of others irrespective of their colour, faith, sexuality or disability. We ,of course ,added our names which are now permanently displayed on this wall. Outside of the Memorial is a permanent monument, a round marble table topped waterfeature listing the names of the fallen – including the names of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmett Till
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