Civil War and Civil RIghts

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     We travelled back through Alabama, this time from North to South.  The same storms that hit the midwest brought snowflakes to Birmingham.  We made our way to Montgomery and were amazed at all the area had to take in.  Our first day there we travelled to Tuskegee to visit the site of training for the Tuskegee Airmen.  After that we went to the Tuskegee Institute for a tour of Booker T. Washington's home, the Oaks.  The house and almost all of the buildings on the college campus were hand made by the students…down to making the bricks and inlaid floors.  It's a beautiful campus.  We learned of the controversies of Booker's mission for the college and his place in the history of rebuilding the South after the Civil War.  We were disappointed that George Washington Carver's museum on the campus was closed for remodeling.  Jackson had been GWC for the third grade wax museum at Grace Christian school in Anchorage, and we learned a lot about him through that.
     In Montgomery, we took in the First White House of the Confederacy.  This was the home of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.  He only stayed here for a few months and then the Confederate White House was moved to Richmond, Virginia, closer to the fighting of the Civil War.  Asa saw a picture of his wife hanging in the house and remembered that he had seen it before.  Sure enough, she was from a wealthy family in Natchez, Mississippi and we had seen the picture there.  They are paying attention!!  We were reminded how deeply some in the South still feel about the Civil War as our tour guide referred to it as the "War of Northern Aggression" and "Lincoln's War."
     From there we toured the parsonage where Martin Luther King Jr. lived with his young family.  It was quite moving to be standing in his kitchen while they played a tape of his voice talking about a late night epiphany he had there.  They were receiving up to 40 threatening phone calls a day; threatening not only him but his wife and baby girl.  A bomb had gone off on the front porch.  He was ready to give up.  Then God told him that he must continue the fight.
     Just like happening to be in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, we ended up in the Montgomery area during the anniversary of the Selma-Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965.  Joe Biden came to Selma to speak on Sunday.  We all had heavy hearts as we learned about this time in history.  This march came 100 years after Blacks were freed, yet they were still not permitted to vote.  And if they did participate in marches or tried to vote, they were kicked off their farms and forced to live in tent cities, in the best case scenarios.

The visit to this area of the country taught us things we did not learn in the classroom.  You have to experience it.