Cycling the Underground Railroad

 DAY 6: MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 

As I type this blog, there are tornado warnings all throughout Alabama, including here in Montgomery.  Fortunately, I am dry in my hotel room (instead of camping in a tent).  Hotel management will inform me if I need to go hide out in the bathroom (seriously!).  

Montgomery became the center of the Southern domestic slave trade when the railroad was completed from Mobile.

Today, there was a little bit of rain, but not enough to put a damper on my day exploring the history of this fascinating city.  Jefferson Davis was installed as President of the Confederacy in Montgomery.  The order to attack Fort Sumner to start the Civil War came from here.  Rosa Parks and the year-long city bus boycott (the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement), the Freedom Riders, and the Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights all centered in this city.  It also became one of the largest domestic slave markets in the South.   Over 2/3s of Montgomery's population on the eve of the War Between the States were enslaved blacks.

More modern events should not be considered as separate phenomena, but as a continuation of the same story.  The Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott decision solidified the narrative that Negroes were less than human and therefore could not ever be citizens of the United States.  That is, Blacks were inferior and not deserving of basic human rights.  The Underground Railroad, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current racial crisis all stem from this view, still evidently held by a large number of Americans even today.

For 30 years, The Equal Justice Initiative has been fighting for fair legal treatment of those accused, especially death row cases.

My first stop today was the office of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), literally right next door to my hotel.  This is the organization I am attempting to raise funds for through my bike ride. The facilities are technically closed due to COVID, but I was able to speak with Gregory Hicks, an associate, and express my gratitude for the work they do on behalf of those wrongly accused of serious crimes, and their efforts at educating the public about the inequities in our criminal justice system. 

An outstanding, interpretive exhibit of the history of racial injustice, especially in the South.

Next was The Legacy Museum, an educational project of EJI. It traces the legal and social evolution of race relations, particularly in the South.   I could have spent all day exploring the excellent, interactive presentations.   This is probably the best, most engaging and compelling historical dispIay I have experienced. 

The Equal Justice Initiative's Peace and Justice Memorial recognizes victims of mob lynchings in the United States.

Another major EJI project is the National Peace and Justice Memorial Garden.   This site is dedicated to recognizing the victims of lynchings throughout the U.S. that occurred until 1960!

Names of lynching victims are cited by county and state on obelisks hanging from the ceiling on rising out of the floor.

Monoliths either based on the floor or hanging from the ceiling represent each county where lynchings have occurred, engraved with the names of the victims.  There are over 4,000 documented cases of mob lynchings, all with either the tacit or active approval of authorities.   It is a sobering, yet beautiful monument. 

Why acknowledge these tragedies?  I thought quite a bit about that today.  I reflected on memorials I had been to that elicited this kind of strong emotion--the Vietnam Veterans Wall in Wasington, D.C., the Civil War Antietam Battlefield in Maryland, the American Cemetery at Normandy, France; the destroyed villages in Verdun.   They all remind us of the loss of life and events we want to remember but not repeat. (Although we seem not to learn very well.)  The Peace and Justice Memorial  rightly fits into this category.   May we remember, and learn.

Art is effectively used to give one a sense of the plight of Africans and African-Americans during our history.

After this I headed to the old Greyhound Bus Station, the site of where the Freedom Riders were viciously attacked by a mob of white men, women and even children!  The station, now a museum, was closed due to COVID and imminent severe weather, but had a well documented retelling of events on the outside of the building.  

A panel from the Freedom Riders Museum, housed in the old Greyhound Bus Station where they arrived in Montgomery.

Another of the panels read:

At 10:32 a.m. on May 20 [1961] the Freedom Riders stepped off a bus here.   They were male and female, black and white.  All 20 were college students.  Some were studying to be ministers.  All were unarmed.  They were trained to respond to hatred with love, to violence with forgiveness. 

In the end, even though some of these young people were severely beaten, they were successful in getting the nation's attention, especially that of the Kennedy administration, to the illegal segregationist practices of Southern states and cities, in defiance of Supreme Court rulings outlawing these practices. 

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where the young Martin Luther King, Jr. was serving during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Heading down toward the State Capitol Building,  I passed the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,  where the city's Black leaders pressed a young 26 year-old minister who was new in town to be the voice of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.   Martin Luther King,  Jr. would become the symbol of non-violent resistance to the discrimination and racial injustice in America. 

I've just scratched the surface of what I witnessed today.  At a later date, I hope to expand on this day.

In the evening I repacked to get ready to ride tomorrow.   The severe weather is forecast to pass in the early hours, with cooler weather and sunshine tomorrow. 

In getting ready, I had to deal with this:

The culprit of the only flat tire I was to experience in 1,100 miles!

The small object below the penny is a fragment of a wire from a steel-belted tire which had worked its way into my rear tube, causing a slow leak.  (This is not unusual when riding on heavily trafficked roads.) All is good now, and I'm ready to pedal tomorrow morning.