Montgomery, Alabama

On the next road from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, leading through Montgomery, Alabama, we relived the powerful history that brought us a step closer to a more perfect union. It was a short but impressionable stop in the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.

We started at the Civil Rights Memorial located at the Southern Poverty Law Center in walking distance of many historical landmarks of that era. The memorial, interestingly enough, was designed by Maya Lin who also designed the Washington D.C. Vietnam Memorial.

In 1981, when she was 21,  her entry for the Vietnam Memorial was chosen out of a field of 1,421 submissions in a design competition open to all Americans. At 28, she was asked to design the Civil Rights Memorial. The water-washed surface of the table is inscribed with the names of 40 people who died in the struggle for civil rights between 1955 and 1968, as well as with landmark events of the period. The water motif  was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known paraphrase of Amos 5:24 – We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Powerful words that spoke to long pent up feelings.

Inside the memorial, the displays tell the stories of the 40 who died and speak to injustices throughout the world.

One of the 40 who took sides …

March 25, 1965 · Selma Highway, Alabama
“Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a housewife and mother  from Detroit, drove alone to Alabama to help with the Selma march after seeing televised reports of the attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She was driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery when she was shot and killed by a Klansman in a passing car.”

Viola’s story gets more interesting. Among the murderers in the car was an FBI employee, Gary Rowe (undercover), who was indicted in 1978 and tried for his involvement in the murder.The first trial ended in a hung jury, and the second trial ended in his acquittal. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover played a large role in attacking and undermining the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. in particular as detailed in Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations. Some believe Hoover was instrumental in the assassination.

The events of Bloody Sunday, the culmination of the three Selma to Montgomery marches, were broadcast on national television including the attack dogs, beatings and fire hoses. The violence unleashed on marchers was under the direction of  Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor who came to symbolize the murders, hangings and sheer brutality that was brought to bear against those seeking basic civil liberties and social justice.

The national attention on the Civil Rights Movement forced Americans to come to terms with the legal and moral issues and culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a year later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Difficult as it is to believe and understand, it took 100 years after the end of the Civil War to encode  basic civil rights that were denied to Blacks in much of the South.

Leaving the Civil Rights Memorial, we walked to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King pastored from 1954-1960.

Although many Black churches were burned and bombed during the movement, including the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on Sunday, September 15, 1963, where four girls were killed, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was spared. Makes one wonder about divine intervention. A view inside the church… the pews are handmade and date to the 19th century.

Ironically enough, from King’s office window he had a view of the Alabama State Capitol Building which served as the first political capitol of the Confederate States of America in 1861, before it was moved to Richmond, Virginia. In the Senate Chamber the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States was drawn up by the Montgomery Convention on February 4, 1861. The convention also adopted the Permanent Constitution here on March 11, 1861. Over 100 years later the third Selma to Montgomery march ended at the front steps of the same building.

While Montgomery served as the first Capitol of the Confederate States of America, the newly elected Jefferson Davis lived in the first White House of the Confederacy.

With time running short we missed the Rosa Parks Museum dedicated to the woman who refused to give up her seat for a white man, an act that sparked the infamous Montgomery Bus Boycott. Parks eventually received many honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. At her death in 2005 she was granted the honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

We left Montgomery all too soon, leaving much more to see and do. For the next few hours driving on the next road, we talked about all that we had seen and what can be done to participate in the search  for social justice. The work of the Southern Poverty Law Center is integral to that effort. Their mission: “The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society” is one that most of us can support.

As we traveled farther down the next road, we discussed the fact that perhaps we are witnessing the growth of a new movement, one seeking economic justice. While the Occupy Wall Street Movement continues to spread across the nation and throughout the world, we begin to consider the issues of poverty, health care, hunger, gross inequalities in wealth and all that entails for our citizens but also for the world. Economic justice may be the central moral question of our day.

The march to a more perfect union never stops. But after witnessing the painful civil rights history, it is worth considering that there must be a way to speed up the pace.