From Montgomery to Maycomb, it's all about justice

We planned to start the day with a visit to the Southern Poverty Law Center to pay one more visit to the Civil Rights Memorial and to add our names to the Wall of Tolerance inside the center.  Much smaller and less comprehensive than Birmingham's Civil Rights Institute, the SPLC was still a spot we wanted to visit.  Little did we realize that we'd wind up right smack in the middle of a press conference, where 38 plaintiffs, led by the SPLC, the ACLU, and the National Immigration Law Center, were announcing their lawsuit against Alabama's HB 56, the newest, and, according to those speaking yesterday, most "Draconian" of those similar anti-immigration laws that have passed in Utah, Georgia, and, of course, Arizona.

As the only tourists inside the building that morning, we were invited to sit in on the press conference.  At first we were uncertain, but Dana's curiosity and Daniel's enthusiasm convinced us we should go for it.  We were the only obvious "accidental tourists," as the gentleman sitting next to Maddie called us, which led Dana to lean over to whisper that he fell an awful lot like Forrest Gump. 

It was quite amazing to be sitting in the midst of reporters and Alabama citizens who are equally passionate about fighting what appears to them as being "reminiscent of the worst aspects of Alaba­ma's history in its pervasive and systematic targeting of a class of persons through pu­nitive state laws that seek to render every aspect of daily life more difficult and less equal."   Having just added our names to the Wall of Tolerance (an extremely cool, for lack of a more apt word, feature, where you read the pledge, electronically add your name, then see it appear before you instantly; Daniel was QUITE enamored with this part of the SPLC :), we couldn't have felt more proud to be witnessing Alabamians who refuse to sit by silently while they see an injustice that should be fought.

Since the press conference seriously set us back in our ambitious plan for the day, we took just a quick driving tour of the MLK highlights (the home he lived in and church he preached in while he lived in Montgomery and led the bus boycott)...

The family in front of King's house was the second group we'd seen that day (the first was waiting for a tour of the SPLC after the press conference ended) that was having a family reunion in Montgomery.  After seeing so many reunion t-shirts on cruise ships and amusement parks, I found it quite heartening to see a group of 30+ reunion t-shirt wearing adults and children waiting outside the Southern Poverty Law Center to share something far more profound than roller coasters or a midnight buffet.

As we said goodbye to Montgomery after noon, with a significant stop ahead and five + hours of driving before we got to our hotel in Tallahassee (where we would also lose an hour as we moved back from Central to Eastern time), we broke our golden rule of never dining in restaurants that we can dine in back home and took the kids to Subway.  They were ecstatic :)

Next stop - the Maycomb of my beloved To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville.  The drive to Lee's home was lovely, and the court house where her father, Amos Lee, practiced law, perfectly preserved.  However, everything else about Lee's childhood home has been horribly altered.  This is what stands in the spot of the home where Harper Lee grew up

The Faulk house, where Truman Capote grew up next door, is just an empty lot (but at least it has a marker indicating that he lived there).  Still, the layout is exactly as you read it in TKAM, where Dill comes to live with his aunt, becomes fast friends with Scout next door, and they can walk to the court house, which is just down the block (and near the jail, where Atticus protects Tom from an angry mob)... if you love the book as much as Maddie and I do, you, too, would relish a visit to Monroeville.  Apparently, around 35,000 people make this pilgrimage each year, which is why I find it even more astounding that the city (or state) doesn't try to recreate some of the neighborhood Lee recreated so famously in her novel.

Still, it's all about the court house, where Gregory Peck came for inspiration and the art director of the film came to take copious notes and drawings.  This is the setting we remember from the novel, and we know so well from the film.  And it is remarkable.

We sat in the jury box, in the pews downstairs, in the witness chair, at each attorney's desk, but not in the judge's seat, which is roped off, for some reason.   However, our favorite spot by far was in the balcony, where Calpurnia sat with Scout, Jem, and Dill, along with Tom Robinson's family and the rest of his black friends and neighbors.  While it might have been intended as a slight to make the black folks sit upstairs, it afforded them the best view in the courhouse.

As we left the courthouse, and Monroeville, both Dana and Daniel said how much they wanted to read To Kill a Mockingbird.   I think that says it all.

We finally rolled into Tallahassee at 8:00 p.m., having been directed by the GPS to take two little country roads we never would have found on our own.  The result was a drive through part of Florida I've never seen before, and couldn't have imagined if I tried.  Rolling hills, more horses and cows than houses, this is Floribama.  A quick stroll through our capital city and FSU (Go Gators!), and we're off to Orlando, for a week of amusement parks.   I promise not to write a blog about every roller coater!

"But for Birmingham, we wouldn't be here."

Said John F. Kennedy, during a meeting in the summer of 1963 to discuss what would become the Civil Rights Act.  Having spent the past couple of days visiting some significant places in the history of that civil rights movement, many of which are captured on Maya Lin's Civil Rights Memorial, which we visited as soon as we arrived in Montgomery this evening, I can't help but feel that Kennedy was right - in more ways that one. 

In Jackson, Mississippi, we visited the humble home of Medgar Evers, still preserved just as it was when he was assassinated in his driveway in June of 1963.

Before leaving Mississippi for Alabama, we also drove through Eudora Welty's neighborhood and looked at some of the lovely homes in the Belhaven area.  Welty lived in this house (built by her parents) for her entire life, and wrote all of her books in her second floor bedroom, which overlooks Belhaven University, a small Christian college that is so pretty Maddie momentarily considered abdicating her atheism.

We arrived in Birmingham by the late afternoon, checking into the Tutwiler, a historic hotel, with time for a brief drive around, a fun dinner at an Alabama barbeque joint, and an audio tour of the historic photograph collection in the Tutwiler lobby.

 Today we walked part of the famous march that got Martin Luther King, Jr. arrested (and led to his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" - click on the link for an excerpt of this very long essay, one of my favorite of all time) and spent a couple of hours exploring the Civil Rights Institute, an amazing museum that brings to life the Freedom Riders, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the whole philosophy of nonviolence behind the civil disobedience practiced by so many brave men and women. 
As we walked through Kelly Ingram Park, the park where student protesters poured out of the 16th Street Baptist Park to begin their march to City Hall, I was overwhelmed by what they had gone through.  Standing in the shadow of the church where four little girls were killed due to a bombing by a white supremacist (at one point there were so many such bombings that Birmingham earned the nickname "Bombingham"), and walking on the same sidewalks where these high school aged students had joined the march in order to invigorate it, was amazing.  As we stopped to photograph one of the historical markers on the sidewalk, a middle aged black woman stopped to say hello.  We happened to be reading about the "Children's Crusade," where those high school students were recruited to join the cause.  She told us that she had been one of those children. 

Needless to say, our lunch conversation today was spirited and meaningful, with the kids wondering whether the fight for gay rights today can be compared to the struggle for civil rights, and all of us reflecting on what we would like to think we would have done had we had the opportunity to be a freedom rider, or to work to help to end the Jim Crow laws in the south. 

Because it can't all be about serious history lessons, we did stop by the oldest baseball stadium in America before we hit the road to Montgomery.  Called  Rickwood Field (after the son who spurned his father's steel business to run a baseball team instead), it is a great old baseball field, where we could run around and play every position and Dana could quote Field of Dreams to his heart's content (and boy did he!)  If you build it, they will come, indeed.

And that brings us to Montgomery, where we will spend the morning before heading to Monroeville, Alabama, home of Harper Lee and Truman Capote (and, because Dad might be interested, Mark Childress), and the inspiration for Maycomb, the fictional town at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird.  We will settle down tonight in our own state capital (it seems only right after having visited the state capitals of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama!)  I'll leave you with what I hope are a couple of artistic shots of the Civil Rights Memorial.  I'll take some more in broad daylight tomorrow.

Discovering What You Didn't Know You Weren't Missing

Yesterday was just the kind of road trip day I enjoy the most.  We woke up in New Orleans, had lunch in Baton Rouge, where we visited the beautiful state capitol building (built by Huey Long, and the tallest one in the country), after taking a driving tour of LSU, then stopped off in Natchez for a short walk along the Mississippi, took the famed drive along the Natchez Trace Parkway, then finally settled into our hotel in Ridgeland, Mississippi (which is just outside of Jackson). 

I love a day like that because I'm able to fill in images that I never cared much were missing.  For instance, how many times have I rooted against LSU, while having no association whatsoever with the school (well, beyond, perhaps their tiger mascot).  And while I have a vague recollection of Huey Long from the history classes I took so long ago, it's something else entirely to stand in the spot where the man was killed (whether assassinated or in a botched attempt to protect him).  When the kids saw the height of the Capitol Building and learned there was an observation deck on its 28th floor, they immediately wanted to check it out. Daniel ran up the impressive steps, Rocky style, while Dana noted in amusement how a step was devoted to each state, ending in the impressive seal at the top. But, oops, then Hawaii and Alaska joined our country, so they had to be slipped in on either side of that seal (at least there were two of them; it would have looked really odd to have just one name off to the side).

Two hours later, we were standing RIGHT next to the Mississippi River, in a spot reffered to at Natchez Under the Hill, where, according to Fodors, all manner of ruffians made money during the years when Natchez was the richest city in America; there were more millionaires there than in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.  Once the railroads replaced the steamboats as the transportation choice for many goods, Natchez lost that distinction.  Still, it's a lovely place I never knew existed before yesterday (other than by the bit of research I'd done for this trip, of course).  

Natchez is the start (or end, depending on which direction you're driving) of the Natchez Trace Parkway, which goes from there to Memphis, TN.  Dana drove for the first hour or so of the drive, before turning the car over to Maddie.  When Maddie took the wheel to drive for an hour or so, I couldn't imagine a more beautiful (yet safe, we may have seen five other cars during the entire drive, and the curves were never too sudden or too severe) way for her to try out her first historic highway (this one - first as a trail cleared by the Native Americans - has been around for 8000 years!); she properly slowed when she saw a lovely deer staring at her from the side of the road, but, alas, my camera was not out and ready to capture the little guy.

After all of the sophisticated culinary delights of New Orleans, we wound up eating dinner in a little log cabin called Trace Grill, where you order at the counter, they bring the food to you, and you're welcome to add your name to the wood walls where many others have done so before. In the video below you can catch a bit of the sibling dynamic that is making this year's summer vacation such fun, as Daniel films Maddie writing her name on the wall. ;)  Since it was after 8:00 by the time we were stopped for the night, we were among the last patrons there.  The result was undivided attention from two young men (maybe in their early 20's, at most), who wanted to provide us with the best possible suggestions of what to do with our one (half) day in Jackson. They were so sweet and earnest that I will feel quite guilty if we don't hit every spot they recommended.  So... here are a few photos from Baton Rouge and Natchez.  After our whirlwind tour of Jackson, we're on the road again - this time to Birmingham, Alabama.  

Fireworks Over the Mississippi

This is the way we concluded our Independence Day, 18 floors above New Orleans, gazing out of our many windows at the dueling barges putting on a spectacular fireworks show from the river below.

We had started the day with breakfast at a classic diner, followed by our not quite 4 hour swamp and bayou tour.  While it was certainly fun, it was not the journey into the bayou I was expecting.  I had images of Mickey Rourke and Angel Heart, and I got Captain Joe and a baby gator with his mouth taped shut.  Still, it was an interesting glimpse into another part of New Orleans and Louisiana.  Our captain was grandson to two Cajun grandmothers, both of whom lived in a cabin in the bayou much like the one (now nothing but a prop) we saw on our trip through a combination of natural and man made canals (dredged by the government in order to search for oil in these waters).  Captain Joe's stories were entertaining, the scenery pleasant, and the music festive, so this was a fun way to spend part of July 4th, even if, as Dana pointed out more than once, we have "better" swamps in our own backyard that we've yet to visit.  Coming soon... a blog post from the Everglades! ;)

After the tour, a visit to Cafe du Monde for one last beignet for the kids and me (and a first one for Dana), music in Jackson Square and a final walk through the Quarter.  We decided to dine in one of the newer restaurants of famed chef John Besh (who now is up to six restaurants in New Orleans, and his first one outside of this, the city in which he was born and raised, which is in San Antonio).  Named  The American Sector and situated adjacent to the World War II Museum, it somehow seemed the patriotic thing to do.   It wound up being the kids' favorite restaurant on the whole trip, so I think we made the right choice for our last evening in New Orleans.

This morning we will check out and head to Jackson, Mississippi, following the Natchez Trace Parkway from Natchez to Jackson, which is just a small section of this scenic drive, but we figured a small section is better than no section at all.  With a full day of driving and stopping ahead (Baton Rouge and Natchez will get at least a cursory nod on our way to Jackson), I will wrap up today's post and add a few more photos from the swamp and the American Sector.

Tell Fiona that I'm sorry we never found Tiana, but I still think she'd love New Orleans!