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.

Today was another very interesting day, but it was one that I had been looking forward to during the whole trip. After breakfast at our hotel in Memphis, we boarded the busses and took our two-and-a-half hour drive over to Little Rock, AK. Along the way, we had a review bus lesson on the Little Rock Nine, and then we watched a documentary film called Journey to Little Rock: The Untold Story of Minnijean Brown-Trickey.

We arrived at Little Rock Central High School, home of the first integration of a public school in the South fifty years ago this year. And man, the place is huge. The whole campus is two city blocks by two city blocks, and as for the campus, it starts out on the sides at two stories, moving towards the center at three stories, then going up to four, and then finally the center of campus has five stories! All I can say is that I assume that the kids that go there sure get their exercise during passing periods!

We started out by visiting the Central High School Historical Site Museum across the street from the school. (Imagine your own high school not only being a National Historic Site, but also having its own museum and gift shop across the street!). The museum was quite a bit smaller than that huge multi-million dollar place we saw in Birmingham, but this one focused on the 1957 integration, on the issues surrounding the integration (such as comparing how Central was funded in comparison to the black high schools in Little Rock), and life after the integration crisis in Little Rock. After that, we had the opportunity to hit the gift shop, where I spent my last dollars on two books and a T-shirt. They also had a corner where they were giving away leftovers from their 50th Anniversary Celebration last September.

After that, we went to Central High School and sat down around their courtyard/reflecting pool. The school doesn’t allow most outside groups to come onto their campus, but they allow our group to come on, which is very exciting. We sat down there and reflected on everything that we learned about in the integration, and asked ourselves if we would allow our friends and classmates to use violent, racist, or other hurtful language towards others without intervening, resolving that we would not do so. We then recreated the experience that the Little Rock Nine had in September 1957 by walking up the front steps of the school.

After that, we all went inside to Central’s auditorium (yes, it’s bigger than the puny auditorium that we’ve got at Aragon), where we met Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine. We welcomed her by giving her a standing ovation in sign language, because she still has flashbacks of her first day at Central and loud noises sometimes cause these flashbacks to occur. In addition to talking about her experiences, she talked about how hurtful language truly was in her life and how it is up to all of us to stop it from spreading. She then had to go back to work (she gave up her lunch hour to come and speak with us).

We then got our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and boarded the bus for the two-and-a-half hour drive back to Memphis. During the ride, we had our final bus lesson, reviewing Dr. King’s last day on earth. When we arrived in Memphis, we went outside of the Lorraine Motel (now a National Civil Rights Museum), which was where Dr. King was shot and killed on April 4, 1968. We sat down in front of the commemorative plaque beneath the balcony where Dr. King was shot, and we listened to King’s “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech, which he made the night before he was killed. We then spent time there reflecting on Dr. King, and then boarded the bus.

The bus returned to the hotel, and after about an hour of free time, we went to our last night activity: clubbing on Beale Street. Though frankly, I didn’t really participate in the dancing (not my thing), however the food was good, and inside, there was a family of five that was playing live country music, including the lead singer who was a boy of five or six years old and who also played the accordion, and boy, he was pretty good. I personally had a better time listening to that inside then dancing to the loud godawful rock music they were playing on the cold, outside patio for the majority of the Sojourn group.

Tomorrow will be our last day in Memphis, and then we’ll be headed back home. My, time flies, doesn’t it?

Tags: Arkansas, Beale Street, Central High School, diaries, Dr. King, Elizabeth Eckford, gift shop, Little Rock, Little Rock Nine, Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, museum, National Historic Site, 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.

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