Blog

By Ellen Shubart, Class of 2006

Last November my husband Richard, along with my brother and sister-in-law, embarked on a “Civil Rights Journey”. Our itinerary—Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama as well as Memphis, Tennessee—hit the highlights of America’s mid-20^th-century civil rights struggles. We visited myriad civil rights sites and museums honoring the Freedom Fighters, Rosa Parks, the Negro Southern (baseball) League, and two churches. We also visited the sites of music-making—Beale Street and Sun Records in Memphis.

The most impressive and hard-hitting sites were in Montgomery. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) operates the Legacy Museum, housed in a restored warehouse, that depicts the history of American slavery and its long-reaching effects into the present. The interactive exhibits include “talking” with prisoners unfairly placed on Death Row. The replica of the visitation room of an Alabama jail offers guests the opportunity to interact with these black men by sitting in front of a screen that show a tape of the prisoner and using a telephone to hear the prisoner. Most of the exhibits are similar– offering simulations via interactive screens running films taken at lynchings, boycotts, and other acts of violence against African Americans. A moving exhibit was that of dirt, soil taken from the various lynching sites across the country, a unique memorial that fills shelves floor to ceiling.

EJI is also behind the Memorial for Peace and Justice, a monument atop a six acre rise just outside downtown Montgomery. This is the first memorial dedicated to the more than 4,400 victims of lynchings. Racial violence by white mobs – hanging, burning people alive, drownings, and beatings –with no repercussions for those who committed the crimes — was the norm for decades in America, especially in the American South. Millions of African Americans were terrorized and ultimately fled the region in the Great Migration between 1917-1975. The stillness of the memorial, made of Corten steel columns hanging free at several levels, each with a county name etched on it followed by the names and dates of lynchings held there, is overwhelming. As you wander through the columns, the enormity of the evil hits hard.

EJI has gained national recognition through the new film about its founder, Byron Stevenson, and his best-selling book; both are titled Just Mercy.

Like Chicago, Montgomery is sited along a river, the Alabama River. The waterfront itself played a role in the history of slavery; it was the last stop that moved people from the eastern U.S., where soil was depleted, to the South. Reportedly, this is where the phrase “sold down the river” originated.

Just up from the waterfront and in front of EJI’s administrative location is a sign, issued by EJI, identifying the location as that of the largest slave auction in the South. Down the street, in front of what is known as the Southern White House, the first location of the Confederacy’s president, is another sign posted by the Alabama Historical Society. This sign indicates that the building was the home of Jefferson Davis. It points out that Jefferson Davis lived here and that he sent the first order for the beginning of the Civil War from here. There is no mention of enslaved peoples or slave auctions.

Other sites in Montgomery were excellent museums, interesting, although for me, not as moving. One told the story of Rosa Parks and her refusal to move off the bus, which began the famous bus boycott. Without a modern context, they didn’t as easily penetrate the heart as well as your brain.

At the Dexter Avenue Church, where Martin Luther King preached before moving to Atlanta, an excellent recap of the civil rights struggle was found in the basement. Our guide was a member of the church. A firm believer in hugging, telling first-person stories, and getting her tour group (including the four of us and some lawyers from California who specialized in immigration law) involved, she even got us to join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome.”

In Selma we found several of the “sites”, locally administered museums, were closed, although their web postings and signs said “open.” Selma is a small town, much in need of economic development. The National Park Service runs two sites documenting the Selma-to-Montgomery march, with good photos and films. The Edmund Pettis Bridge would be impressive even if it didn’t have an historic civil rights past; every visitor, including us, walks across.

Other sites awaited us after Montgomery. Highlights in Birmingham included the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Freedom Riders Trailways bus depot, and the areas where Bull Connor’s dogs and hoses attacked peaceful marchers. We also visited the Negro Southern League Museum; a less dramatic experience, the roots of segregation are deep here. Satchel Paige’s game worn uniform and the McCallister Trophy, the oldest known Negro League Trophy, are on display. The well organized and information-filled museum holds the largest collection of original Negro League baseball artifacts in the country.

In Memphis the music museums were fine, although Beale Street seems just a ghost of its former self. Disc jockeys rather than live music predominate, and it was a teeny-bopper scene—too much for us old folks. But the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel, is another gem that hits hard with lots of film clips and displays. It brings the civil rights movement forward in history. Starting with discussions of Africa, where enslaved peoples were bought and sold, it moves story of the struggle for equality up to the Black Panthers and the protests against the war in Vietnam. There is also a rotating exhibit of artists’ depictions of the struggles today.

An article in the New York Times calls a visit to Montgomery coming face to face with a “reckoning on race.” The entire trip did that for us. It is not easy, it is not “good news” in the Biblical sense. Instead, it is a confrontation with what this country has done to its people of color and what needs to be done now. It is well worth a trip.