To be honest, many of the America’s southern states are undervalued and therefore are under-visited. The best part of taking this road trip, which had started in Memphis Tennessee a few days ago and will include driving through Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and back to Tennessee, is that we have the time to not only visit the popular spots, but also those that may not attract so many foreign visitors.
We can never expect to understand the complexities surrounding the civil rights movement and reading books and watching movies on the subject are next to meaningless until one is right there in the very spots where these events took place in the 1960s. Today, I plan to visit some of the most iconic civil rights movement sites as I drive into Selma and later to Montgomery with hopefully, some surprising experiences on the way.
Segregation is something we associate with North America and South Africa, But in 2023 our government tried to segregate Australians by colour by attempting to introduce the Voice, which would have changed our Constitution to acknowledge those who are and those who identify as Indigenous Australians as being more relevant than the rest of the population. This divisive action by Anthony Albanese, our Prime Minister, has seen a rise in discrimination of white people, of Asians, and of Jewish people. Australia is a country where all people no matter their race, religion, gender, or political leanings could live in relative harmony. Today, discrimination and profiling by colour, white and black, and by gender and religion, Christian and Jewish, is prevalent and it is diminishing everything I have grown up to know and to understand about our unique multicultural population. And I don’t think it is in the best interests of our country. Not now, not ever.
Like so many of the southern North American cities I’ve visited so far, Selma seems a little neglected, tired perhaps. But unlike some towns that shall remain nameless, it doesn’t have a hopeless atmosphere, quite the opposite in fact. As I turn into Mabry Street to see the Sturdivant Hall Museum, I notice that the area is being gentrified, old weatherboard homes are renovated or being updated. It’s a pretty area and beautifully kept with pastel-coloured homes and matching picket fences. Whilst we do not visit the architecturally significant Greek Revival mansion that is now a museum, I am happy to see that it has been beautifully preserved. There are too many historic buildings, statues, and monuments being ripped down or destroyed because a small portion of the population wants to change history.
I notice something strange in the next street, which I want to investigate.
As I turn into the main road to the city centre, I can see a group of homes destroyed by a tornado, and quite recently it seems. Just one street from the Sturdivant Hall Museum, where I have just admired the beautifully renovated homes, I am now looking at a line of destruction that home-owners could not possibly repair. Tornados have a habit of cutting a thin swathe of violent destruction, pulverising some buildings, and leaving others relatively unscathed. The ferocious and devastating habit of a tornado that hit the city of Selma on 12 January 2023, less than eighteen months ago is an example of this. In front of me, a tree has been dumped onto the roof of one house, its roots sinking into the front porch whilst its dead branches reach for the sky. Sheets of rusted metal still lay where they were dumped during a few violent seconds at the height of the storm. Next door, the house is intact. The humidity in this region has encouraged trees and other plants to run rampant in abandoned houses, vegetation covering what were once family homes. It looks very sad.
We continue to the Brown Chapel A.M.E located at 410 Martin Luther King Boulevard in the middle of a project housing estate. It was a gathering place for organisers of the civil rights movement and played a major role in the events that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As I have noted in previous posts, equality for the black people of America was a hard-won battle and I think that the walls of this church would have many terrible stories to tell. Now a National Historic Landmark, this iconic building, which was the starting point for three Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965, now stands proud and tall.
Driving into the main street of Selma’s downtown is like driving into a ghost town. It is empty of people. Businesses are closed. Buildings have an air of neglect and desolation. The National Voting Rights Museum is closed as is the Slavery and Civil War Museum. We drive slowly along the wide avenue that was probably once filled with people socialising, shopping, and going about their business and wonder why this city is so empty. I check Wikipedia and find that the population is declining as industries have moved away and agriculture does not provide enough jobs.
We pass the Edmund Pettus Bridge, so I park the car and walk on the pedestrian footpath across the river. I cannot imagine the atmosphere that was here in 1965 when the civil rights marchers were attacked by highway patrol troopers with batons and tear gas stopping them from advancing along the road to Montgomery. It is far removed from the serene river scene I view from the bridge. In today’s warm sunshine, the view is idyllic and my short walk in the footsteps of those who marched here almost sixty years ago is truly moving. Those fateful marches did contribute to the Voting Rights Act, which was a landmark achievement in the civil rights movement.
A man in a wheelchair stops and chats for a short while. He points to the buildings that are along the main street and that back onto the river. Each of them, except for the recently-renovated hotel is derelict or close to it. He talks about days gone by when Selma was a thriving city and finishes by announcing that the Greyhound Bus no longer stops in Selma. Now, that is a sad state of affairs, since Greyhound has traditionally been the means by which people from low socio-economic households can move from town to town.
At the bottom of the bridge on the corner of the street, I am met by another man, a teacher who spends his spare time taking people on walking tours of Selma. His great uncle marched across the bridge, but not with Martin Luther King Jr. His great uncle did, however, march with then President Barack Obama on 7 March 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of the marches. It was interesting to talk to this man about his family’s connection to the bridge. After all, I am here to listen and to learn from those whose families were directly involved in the civil rights movement. But then, when the conversation turns to how Australia treats its Indigenous people, I begin to question this man’s motives. Did he aim to insult and offend my country by comparing the plight of our indigenous with the African-American struggle for equality? Because at the end of the day, I would have more in common with him, as a black man presumably descended from slaves than what he has in common with indigenous Australians. I think he gathered that I was going to have a gentle shot at him over his questions because he ‘suddenly’ saw a couple of other tourists and walked away. I actually wanted to pose the same question to him about the plight of the American Indigenous people and the way they are treated. It’s sad to think that one cannot have a conversation without it being based on race. But I am not deterred by his attitude because I am comfortable in my skin and after all, I am here in this city talking him. It was a weird conversation.
It is time to move on and we do. Turning right, we drive over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and drive the relatively short 87 kilometres to Montgomery, a pretty city with a population of about 200,000.
Montgomery is the capital city of Alabama and is the scene of probably one of the most important incidents of the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to sit at the back of the segregated bus culminated in her arrest on 1 December 1955. After a boycott of Montgomery’s buses by black residents, they were desegregated one year later. We walk past the life-size Rosa Parks statue on our way to the visitor centre. As luck would have it, we had almost an hour before the Rosa Parks Museum was due to close. The museum is located on the site of Rosa Parks’ arrest and houses a small but impactful museum that tells of the role Rosa Parks, and the city of Montgomery, had on the civil rights movement.
This is also the location of our last major civil rights movement site, and it is probably one of the most challenging. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is the formal name for a fairly new open-air museum that honours the black victims of lynching in the United States. Again, I am shocked that it is necessary to go through metal detectors and x-rays to gain entry to the museum. Opened in 2018, a path leads through beautiful green lawns to a memorial square inside of which 805 hanging steel rectangles, approximately the size of coffins, represent each county of the United States in which lynchings occurred. Upon each of these rectangles a list of names of the people who were lynched is inscribed. As I follow the path, I am walking below the ground, where the size and volume of the hanging tributes to the violent deaths of so many people are overwhelming. I feel very small and insignificant amongst these silent sentinels. Outside is another mass of rectangles lying on the ground. Identical to the hanging columns, these are intended to be collected by each of the counties to be displayed within their communities or within their civic precincts. Within the large garden area are sculptures and individual stories. Like so many museums that are well-thought-out, are provocative, and are hard-hitting, this is a museum that should be seen even by those, like me, who do not share this history.
Together, Selma and Montgomery provide a brutal insight into the struggles of America’s black people to achieve equality in a country into which they were thrust through no fault of their own. As we head towards other places and different points of interest, my small journey through sites of the civil rights movement from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee will not be forgotten.
Title Quote: Blue Mink
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