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
