These are diary entries that I wrote throughout my ten-day Sojourn to the Past trip on February 14-23. Each entry is posted here two weeks after it was originally written, due to the provision that I didn’t have any computer or internet access during my trip. Be sure to check out my other Sojourn to the Past coverage. Enjoy.

We had a very long day today, but for once, we spent none of it in the hotel, and all of it on the road.

We started the day by going through the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. They have a HUGE multi-million dollar museum set up showing off the various aspects of the civil rights movement. The museum included a short film on the early history of Birmingham, an exhibit with examples of different types of segregation, an exhibit with examples of the stereotypes that both whites and blacks had, a gallery of exhibits featuring the major events in the movement, and then an exhibit identifying significant milestones from after the end of the movement. It was a great museum that I wished that I had a little more time to see.

We then sat a bit in front of their statue of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Birmingham’s civil rights minister. Normally, Rev. Shuttlesworth would be meeting us in person, but he’s recovering from a recent stroke and could not join us. Late today, though, his wife popped by in his place.

We then walked down the block to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and in the sanctuary, we had a final lesson on the aftermath of the bombing and listened to Dr. King’s eulogy for the girls. We then had lunch in the basement of the church–now a kitchen area–which was where those girls were at the time of the bombing.

After that, we had some free time, during which we went to the Civil Rights Institute’s gift shop (I spent $105 there on a poster, two books, and a DVD), and to the historic Kelly Ingram Park across the street, which was where dogs and firehoses were used on protesting children in 1963.

We left at 2:00 en route to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, but we stopped in Meridian, MS along the way to visit the gravesite of James Chaney, who was abducted by the KKK and killed while working on the Freedom Summer project in 1964.

Finally, on the remainder of the bus ride to Hattiesburg, we had a bus lesson on the Dahmer family, who we will be meeting tomorrow. (More about them tomorrow.) We finally arrived in Hattiesburg and checked into our hotel.

Tomorrow, we will have another busy day and get to meet another family…

Tags: Birmingham, bombing, Chaney, Civil Rights Institute, Civil Rights Movement, Dahmer family, diaries, Freedom Summer, Hattiesburg, Kelly Ingram Park, Meridian, Mississippi, museum, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Sojourn to the Past

These are diary entries that I wrote throughout my ten-day Sojourn to the Past trip on February 14-23. Each entry is posted here two weeks after it was originally written, due to the provision that I didn’t have any computer or internet access during my trip. Be sure to check out my other Sojourn to the Past coverage. Enjoy.

Actually, I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, because I didn’t get a chance to write this up yesterday. It was by far our busiest day, lasting for sixteen hours. We did a lot, we saw a lot, and we were pretty much wiped out by the end of the day, but glad for the late wake-up call the next morning.

The day didn’t start in the hotel, for once. After checking out and having breakfast, we embarked on a walking tour of Selma. The tour included, in particular, the major locations of the Bloody Sunday and the Selma-Montgomery marches of March 1965.

We ended at the Voting Rights Museum, which we went through. The museum was interesting in that it’s run by volunteers and is actually located in the former Selma headquarters of the White Citizens Council (considered the less militaristic arm of the KKK). From there, we re-created the Bloody Sunday march, and walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the place where state troopers violently retaliated 43 years ago. After that, we had lunch (kindly made for us by a local family), and drove on to Montgomery.

Once we arrived in Montgomery, we had a two-part lesson in the hotel. Part one covered SNCC’s Mississippi Freedom Summer project and the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner (all Freedom Summer volunteers, two of whom were white). Then part two discussed the 1955 death of fourteen year-old Emmett Till, who was kidnapped from his bed, murdered, and mutilated by whites simply for whistling in the presence of a white woman. After the lesson, we had a surprise guest speaker: Simeon Wright, Emmett’s cousin, who was sharing the bed with Emmett the night he was kidnapped and killed. It was a very touching story that personally deeply touched me.

After that, we checked into the hotel and had dinner (tacos), and then went out for our three-part grand tour of Montgomery.

My group started at Alabama state capitol, which was where Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was sworn into office in February 1861. It was also the final stop of the Selma-Montgomery voting rights march on March 25th, 1965.

After that, we went to the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. The memorial was interesting because it featured the theme of Martin Luther King’s favorite quote: “Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” It features a circle with a film of water on it that runs 24/7 with 40 civil rights martyrs listed and engraved there. We then went into their civil rights memorial museum and saw a film about the monument, thought in my personal opinion, the film was more of an advertisement than anything else. However, they did have something called a Wall of Nonviolence, which was essentially some huge digital screens with names of people who have pledged to be nonviolent–I added my name to the wall, which was cool.

All in all, it was a very long day ending around 10:30 at night, and then featuring a good-sized chunk of homework to round it out.

The trip is now half over, and the second half begins..

Tags: Alabama, Bloody Sunday, Chaney, Civil Rights Memorial, diaries, Edmund Pettus Bridge, Emmett Till, Freedom Summer, Goodman, Maya Lin, Mississippi, Montgomery, museum, Schwerner, Selma, Simeon Wright, Sojourn to the Past, tour, voting rights, walking