Root, Root, Root For The Biscuits!

Baseball is a simple game. Pitch the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball. But if the ball drops, run the bases and hope you reach base safely and score some runs. Three strikes and you are out (unless the catcher drops the third strike), three outs to an inning, nine innings per game. If the home team is ahead in the middle of the ninth, they get to go home early. As does everyone, I guess. Game over. But if the home side does come up to bat in the ninth inning in Montgomery, Alabama, you better believe somewhere in Riverwalk Stadium there's a dude dressed up as a baker riding a barnyard animal. It's rally chicken time! 

On May 14 of this year, we made our way toward the riverside in Montgomery, paid our $14 each for the best seats in the house and went to see the hometown Montgomery Biscuits (yes, that's the actual team name) take on the visiting Chattanooga Lookouts. The Biscuits were decked out in their "Gump" uniforms that night, celebrating Forrest Gump's fictional hometown in Greenbow, Alabama, and the Lookouts had on their brown colored "Nooga" unis (why abbreviate your city name that way?). And sure enough, there we were almost four hours into a nine inning, ten pitcher game with hundreds of fellow Biscuit fans getting fired up by the rally chicken in hopes of a late game comeback.

It didn't work. 

Yes, they had a reasonable shot at a comeback in the ninth but it was a just not a good night for the Biscuits. Four errors in the field squandered an early 1-0 lead as they struggled to find the right solution on the mound. At one point, they even had their third baseman take a shot at firing balls and strikes toward home plate. Their performance in the field and in the batter's box was not enough, even with a grown man in a baker's costume riding a chicken throwing out biscuits in the stands trying to will the team to a come from behind victory. Game over!

One of Montgomery's former train sheds - now part of Riverwalk Stadium.

Sports in large cities and small cities and large towns and small towns are important to community pride and togetherness. Even if the team stinks for years and years and years. Local sports offer a cause to rally around for individuals and families, and people from all walks of life in the community can come together and cheer for a common cause, just like they were this past May at Riverwalk Stadium. That sounds totally corny but I completely believe in it. So much so that the whole premise of my Master's thesis in college was centered around this very idea. 

There are many great professional sports leagues and systems in the United States but none have the reach of baseball. And by "reach", I mean no sport has been around in so many communities all over this country for so long. No professional sport has been a part of more people's lives over the last let's say 150 years quite the same way baseball has. Not basketball, not soccer, not hockey, not football. Baseball is it. And baseball is especially important in small cities and large towns and small towns. Large cities have all sorts of access to live professional sports. Everywhere else? Not so much, which is why Minor League Baseball is so important to sports in this country. It touches more spots in the United States than any other sporting league below whatever the top league is.

But that dynamic may be changing. Two years ago there were 160 teams in the Minor League Baseball (MiLB) system. Most of those clubs were owned and operated by local interests, with Major League Baseball (MLB) teams providing the players. In December 2019, MLB decided they wanted to shake that up, meaning cut some costs and cut some teams out of the system. A lot of teams. Like 43. Earlier this year, they did just that.

Now, that doesn't mean that 43 minor league baseball teams ceased to exist, but it might mean something close to that soon. Without the Majors providing players, teams are forced to look for their own squads, something they didn't need the resources to do just two years ago. MLB is also removing one of the big perks of attending minor league ball, the idea that you can see a future superstar right there in your own town. With no players on Major League payrolls, that possibility, however remote, becomes almost not really possible at all. This is critical-level small city and town survival type stuff.

Friday night minor league ball in Memphis: Let's go Redbirds!!!

I got a little hung up on this whole thing last year. And maybe I still am this year. Here's a group of 30 sports franchises that pull in (by one estimate I read) $10 billion per year looking to cut minor league sports out of 43 cities and towns to save less than $25 million annually. How does that make any sense? I'm all for free enterprise but less than $1 million savings per team against that kind of revenue total (assuming the numbers I read are reasonably accurate) seems like it might be worth it to keep baseball in some places of the country that are far, far from any other professional team. Take the little bit of a loss to keep teams in their communities.

So who cares, really? Well, besides me, I think a lot of people. I really do believe having a professional ball team in town is healthy for towns and cities. Some of these teams have been around a long, long time. The Chattanooga team was founded in 1885 and the Lookouts name dates to 1909. That makes them older than 22 of the 30 teams that currently play baseball at its highest level in this country (and Canada). Think that's worth something? I do. Especially since the Lookouts were on the original cut list from MLB (they survived, perhaps obviously).

Unfortunately for me last year, there were very few ways to act on my MiLB fixation since the 2020 MiLB season (but not the MLB season; too much money at stake to let a pandemic get in the way) was canceled in total. So last year, I could not go to a game to cheer on my local minor league team in Richmond, VA or Salisbury, MD. But I did buy some swag based on some trips we took in 2020, including caps from the Vermont Lake Monsters and Missoula Paddleheads and a shirt from the Boise Hawks (actually the Boise Papas Fritas but we'll get to that). I had to support these teams somehow if I couldn't do it at the box office.

But this year, Minor League ball is back. And by happy coincidence, all three cities where we stayed overnight on our tour of the American South not only have MiLB franchises, but all three had games in town at least one night we were also in town. Play ball!

The train rolls past Montgomery's Riverwalk Stadium a few times per night.

We managed to take in two games in our time down south: one in Memphis watching the hometown Redbirds battle (and I use that term loosely here; we left with the Redbirds down 10-1 in the seventh) the visiting Durham Bulls and the May 14 contest between Montgomery and Chattanooga down in Alabama. Both were glorious experiences.

There are a few things that fascinate me about Minor League Baseball. Number one is the connections that the team makes with the local community. This is manifested in so many ways, and not just in the enthusiasm of the adults and kids in the stands. It's in everything from the local food sold at the ballpark to the (sometimes corny) local advertisements and sponsorships to the theme nights with custom one-night-only uniforms to the design of the stadiums. I drank local beer and ate chicken biscuits at the game in Montgomery while three or four trains rumbled by on the freight rail tracks that run right past the stadium. The train is such a huge part of the history of most towns in this country and Montgomery is no exception; a portion of Riverwalk Stadium is a train shed converted into offices and retail space. This connection through their baseball park is huge.

One of the other reasons I love watching Minor League ball is the players on the field in front of you are literally chasing their dreams. Players at this level (AAA in Memphis, one step below the big leagues and AA in Montgomery, one rung further down) are not in it for their weekly wages while they are at the plate or on the mound in places like Pensacola or Biloxi or Norfolk or Louisville. If you are making it in triple-A ball, you are likely pulling in a cool $700 a week (remember this is part time job) and it goes down from there. Double A players earn just $600 each week; that's $15 an hour assuming a 40 hour week. This is poverty line level stuff. The only reason these players are toughing it out in small cities and towns wherever they may be in America is that there is some hope of making it big. These guys are going for it. 

Finally, there are the team names. I'm a huge believer in site-specific nicknames for sports teams and the minor leagues generally crush this concept big time. Biscuits in Montgomery, Storm Chasers in Omaha, Isotopes in Albuquerque, Blue Claws on the Jersey Shore, Kernels in Cedar Rapids, Lake Monsters in Vermont, Flying Squirrels in Richmond, Hops in Hillsboro, OR. The creativity is off the charts here and the teams will do everything and anything to sell merch, including numerous rebrands throughout the season (hence the Boise Papas Fritas, part of MiLB's annual celebration of latino influence on the sport). So Redbirds isn't so amazing, especially considering they are the AAA affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. But the hats are awesome just the same.

Beer in Memphis (still under COVID protocols during that game!)...

and biscuits in Montgomery. I mean, OF COURSE!!!

Neither the Redbirds nor the Biscuits won the games we attended, which as a Washington Wizards and New York Jets fan seemed perfectly in keeping with my typical sports experience. It really didn't matter. I felt a connection to an important American tradition, one that I sincerely hope will continue for a long, long time. Although maybe not in the 43 spots where the Majors pulled a team from earlier this year. 

Two years ago at this time, there were professional baseball teams in Lowell, Massachusetts and Port Charlotte, Florida. Neither of those teams exist anymore. The Spinners and Stone Crabs are both gone, victims of the cost savings measures imposed by Major League Baseball. The three teams in Vermont, Missoula and Boise that I elected to support last year by mail-ordering some swag were all stripped of their affiliations this year. In fact, every team in Montana (all three of them) lost their MLB sponsorship this year. Only time will tell what that lack of support will do to these teams in the communities of Great Falls, Missoula and Billings. And Burlington and Boise, for that matter. The effects are already obvious (to me) by checking out the Lake Monsters' website. 

Sporting teams being removed from communities by wealthy men looking to save a couple of extra bucks is not a good situation. Fortunately for us this year, there were teams in both Memphis and Montgomery still around for us to spend a few hours watching young men chase their dreams hard. It's a totally different experience from attending a Major League game. The talent level differential is so obvious, but somehow it seems more meaningful standing during the seventh inning stretch in Montgomery, Alabama singing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" with the line "root, root, root for the Biscuits". I can't wait for my next minor league game. Something tells me I won't have to wait long. Unless Major League Baseball decides they want to save a whole lot more money.

And if they do, I'll always remember the rally chicken!!!

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How We Did It

If you are staying in downtown Memphis or Montgomery (I know, it's a small downtown in Montgomery) and the Redbirds or Biscuits are in town, I'd highly recommend spending three hours or so on a summer night rooting for the home team. Both stadiums are right downtown and walkable from a number of hotels. Plus the tickets are super, super cheap. We paid $14 for the best seats in Montgomery. We splurged a bit more in Memphis (bigger city; better players in theory) and spent $28 each for our seats there.

Because there were limited seats available due to the COVID pandemic, we bought tickets ahead of time for the Redbirds game. I don't think we really needed to. In Montgomery, we just walked up to the box office and got some really great seats. The best part about taking in a game in a place as small as Montgomery, Alabama is that there's really no bad seat in the house.

There are 138 other teams in Minor League Baseball. If you can't make it to Memphis or Montgomery on your next trip, there are plenty of other places to take in a game. Just don't try to do it in Montana this year.

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Southern Food

The above photograph is the truth.

Now that we are through the Civil Rights blog posts that formed the basis of our trip to the American South, let's talk about something we were really looking forward to out of our May vacation: the food. I'm serious. I've never really explored southern food in its element and this trip was an opportunity to do just that. We were prepared for some down home, finger-licking, butter-filled, deep-fried, artery-clogging goodness. Well, maybe not goodness in the artery-clogging department but we were looking forward to eating some stuff that tasted super good at just about every meal. Tons. Of. Flavor.

I went south with a list. Fried green tomatoes. Fried chicken. Biscuits. Greens. Barbeque. And maybe a few other things mixed in there that I either for sure loved or felt pretty darned confident that I would love. I did my research on where to eat online, on Netflix, in guidebooks and from memory, and laid out what I thought would be a pretty good list of places to stop and chow down.

I was right. We had some amazing eats. We also had some misses both in terms of restaurants serving what I thought were sub-par versions of foods that we sought and in terms of restaurants that we would never return to based on our one stop there. It was bound to happen. There are too many different opinions and palates out there; not everybody is going to agree on what the best food is. Here are a few words about the best stuff I thought we ate in in our 10 days in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas. I'm highlighting the best of each type of food we had as I go.

And spoiler alert: there's no banana pudding on this list. I'm not going anywhere and deliberately eating anything banana flavored. Except maybe when it comes to actual bananas, and then only in the tropics but definitely in Ecuador.

Biscuits

I have to tell you, there are some foods in this world that I just don't get what all the fuss is about. And biscuits are on that list. If there was a redemption story possibility for a food on this trip, it was the biscuit. I took a trip to Texas in 2013 to see if I really did actually like barbeque (turns out I do!); this trip had the potential to do for the biscuit what Texas did for BBQ in '13.

I still don't get the fuss. I used to make biscuits at home on weekends and have them with jam for breakfast and I thought those were pretty good. Every other biscuit, including most on this trip: meh! I find them stodgy and heavy and that's about it. And if you want to make them worse for me, throw on some sausage gravy. I had some gravy on this trip at a somewhat famous restaurant in Memphis that was like paste. Paste is not good.

This trip didn't save biscuits for me. However, I did find one that I would try again. Best biscuit: Nashville Biscuit House, Nashville, TN.

Fried Chicken

The best meal we had on this trip (hands down) was at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken in Memphis. The second best meal we had on this trip was also at Gus's.

By my count, I had fried chicken eight times on this trip, including twice for breakfast, in a sandwich, in wing form, twice in a biscuit and twice at Gus's. There is just one I'd go back to in a heartbeat and that's (obviously) Gus's. I don't know how they make the batter so light (with that hint of hot sauce) and keep that chicken so juicy. It's pretty much perfect. If there's a better piece of fried chicken out there, I don't know what it is. This stuff is the best.

OK, so truth be told, I'd been to Gus's before and I knew it was good. I just didn't know we'd end up there twice in a five night stay in Memphis. Best fried chicken: Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken, Memphis TN. And it's not even close!! I do feel that Saw's Soul Kitchen in Birmingham, AL deserves a shout out here. I had the fried chicken sandwich and I'd eat it again although I will say there's more tolerance for lack of perfection with a sandwich than a piece of chicken by itself. But I'd still order it again.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, the picture above looks like a burger. That's because it is.

If there's one food I convinced myself I would love on this trip, it was fried green tomatoes, despite not having really any experience with this southern staple. Looking back on things, I'm thinking maybe I confused fried green tomatoes with pickled green tomatoes. 

I ate fried green tomatoes twice in sandwiches (including the burger shown above and an actual fried green tomato sandwich) and once as a side on this trip. For the sake of accurate comparison, I did remove the FGTs from the two sandwiches so I could taste them on their own.

I have to say I'm not thrilled, although the ones on the burger above had the most flavor and the most tanginess. Maybe a little heavy on the batter but still with good flavor. The other two just tasted like oil. Soft pass on these things in the future. Best fried green tomatoes: Cahawba House, Montgomery, AL. Yes, it's the burger above.

Barbeque

There are a ton of barbeque traditions in this country and they all have their own distinct tastes. Go to North Carolina or Texas or Kansas City or St. Louis and you'll find dishes that have a common theme (meat cooked slowly over wood or coals) but have completely different taste profiles. We managed just two true barbeque meals in our time down south and both were in Memphis, which happens to have both dry (meaning dry rubbed with spices and served with or without sauce) and wet (meaning flavored with sauce during the cooking process) varieties of barbeque.

We chose two barbeque joints in Memphis. One offered both dry and wet options; the other had only wet. And like Gus's, I had been to one of these two (the one with the dry and wet options) before.

Barbeque is inherently messy. Sauce gets everywhere. So a dry-rubbed and smoked rack of ribs is refreshingly non-messy. Being able to strip meat off a rack of pork ribs with your teeth while getting incredible flavor and no sauce all over your hands and face is a good thing. A really good thing. I have to say that my memory of dry rubbed barbeque in Memphis from my trip in 2018 was better than this year but I'd still opt for dry over wet any day. Best barbeque: Central BBQ, Memphis, TN.

Greens

I don't know what it is that makes greens so good. I mean this is about the least appetizing side in the world. It's just chopped up leaves in liquid. But it can be so, so good.

I made it a point of pride on this trip to eat greens whenever I could, which meant I discriminated not at all. There was no advance research on best greens in the four states we visited, I just jumped in every time I found them. I didn't keep track of the number of times I ate greens on this trip (and it was mostly collard greens by the way) but I'm pretty sure it was close to the number of times I had fried chicken, although admittedly I didn't eat greens for breakfast.

If I had to describe my perfect greens, I'd have them made them juicy and rich and slightly bitter with a little spice thrown in via maybe some red pepper flakes. The greens in the photograph with the ribs two pictures up matched that description and maybe because I'd already had them at Central BBQ three years ago that way, they became a self-fulfilling prophecy as my ideal greens (turnip greens, by the way; the only ones we found on this trip). But I was surprised once in our week down south to be served some collards that were decidedly sweet (the photo above) in downtown Montgomery. Totally different than Central's turnip greens but equal in a completely alternate universe way. When I think of greens from this trip, those are the two dishes I remember best. Best greens: Central BBQ, Memphis, TN and Cahawba House, Montgomery, AL.

Tamales

Why are there tamales in the South east of the Mississippi River, you might ask. Well, apparently the story is that Mexican immigrant workers brought tamales with them when they came to work in the fields in the Mississippi delta after the end of the Civil War and they caught on. So these days there are tamale shacks all over Memphis and down into Mississippi. You won't find them in corn husks like the traditional versions in Mexico. More likely you'll get them in wax paper which works just as well for steaming.

A tamale is a pretty simple dish: it's just corn masa with some kind of meat filling. In our pre-vacation planning research we found a lot of ground beef and ground turkey tamales and not much else. We opted for our single meal of tamales at Doe's Eat Place in Little Rock, which I realize is not in the delta but the original's Doe's is. We figured a franchise of an original classic would deliver the same experience and Doe's is legendary in Little Rock, with photos of celebs and politicians (including Bill Clinton, who we have followed culinarily before in Iceland and Germany).

We opted to share a dozen beef tamales with chili at Doe's. They were hot and filling and corn-y and we found the chili essential to counter the density of the tamales. This is comfort food. I'd go back if I were ever in Little Rock. We also managed to stuff down some corn fritters and hush puppies (I can highly recommend both). This was not a healthy meal. Best Tamales: Doe's Eat Place, Little Rock, AR. This is not a by default rating; these things were good.

Pimento Cheese

Let's get one thing out of the way right away in this section of this post. I LOVE pimento cheese. I know it's not a natural food and I don't care. This stuff is so cheesy and spicy (and how is there really anything much better than that) and honestly, I'm not sure I've ever had pimento cheese that I didn't like. I still remember one of my best meals ever as a pimento cheese sandwich in Bardstown, Kentucky and that meal was nothing more than a cold sandwich on plain bread. The pimento cheese is everything.

Not familiar with pimento cheese? Three mandatory ingredients: some sort of cheddar, mayonnaise and pimento, which is generally a roasted red pepper cut small. It sounds amazing, right? Even if it doesn't, it is. Trust me.

My pimento cheese on this trip was confined to one state: Alabama. It was worth the wait. I had it on a sandwich, on a burger (see the fried green tomato section above) and in pure unadulterated way-more-than-I-should-have-eaten form with some flatbread (that's the picture above). The spiciness definitely came through the best when I ate it just by itself but that may have been because there was nothing else competing with the pimento cheese gorgeousness (or it may have been some cayenne in the mix). Best pimento cheese: EVERYWHERE! But specifically Saw's Soul Kitchen, Birmingham, AL; Central Restaurant, Montgomery, AL; and Cahawba House, Montgomery, AL. The picture above is from Central.

White Chocolate Ducks

OK, so there's no way chocolate mousse-filled white chocolate ducks were on my list before arriving in Memphis. But on our first morning in town we hit up the Peabody Deli & Desserts for breakfast and these things caught my eye. And after a couple of more breakfast stops, I figured we may as well spring for one each of these on our last night in the hotel. It's not every day we stay at the Peabody so why not.

So, honestly, how could this not be really good? While the white chocolate was not as sweet as I'm used to, the mousse was a perfect filling for the duck. These are overindulgent and overpriced but I'd honestly suggest anyone staying at the Peabody spring for one if you deserve a treat while in Memphis. Best white chocolate ducks: Peabody Deli & Desserts, Memphis, TN. Duh!!!

Fried chicken sandwich with pimento cheese and collard greens. Pretty much the perfect dish.

That's my food report for this trip. Almost. There are a few last odds and ends to address.

If there's one regional specialty that is a glaring omission from this list, it's macaroni and cheese. I absolutely love mac and cheese and for some reason we ate zero of this dish on this trip. None. Not a single forkful or bite. Too distracted by the greens, I'm guessing. I didn't miss it in any way. And I'm shocked to be writing those words. 

Despite the absence of mac and cheese, we did have a couple of pasta dishes on the trip and I'll never be able to understand the appeal of spaghetti with barbeque sauce. Who knows, maybe there's only one restaurant in the world that serves this dish but if that's true, we went there and I just don't get it. Barbeque sauce does not belong on spaghetti in any world that I can imagine.

Finally, I think a shoutout is appropriate to a spot where we didn't expect to find anything good food-wise and that's Tupelo, Mississippi. We hit up Tupelo to visit the Elvis Presley Birthplace on the way from Memphis to Birmingham. Our plan was to grab a sandwich from the Peabody Deli and stop somewhere along the way at a park or picnic table somewhere but we decided not to do that and instead stop wherever we got hungry. That place turned out to be Tupelo.

By sheer chance, we picked pretty much the first place we came to and that was Kermit's Soul Kitchen (formerly Kermit's Outlaw Kitchen). The lunch we had here was amazing and Kermit himself was serving up food when we walked in. If we'd known about this spot, I'd have even considered staying in Tupelo just so I could eat a couple of times here. I'd love to explore the rest of Kermit's menu based on the one meal we had.

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How We Did It

There are ten photographs in this post from seven separate restaurants (I'm not counting the Peabody Deli & Desserts). Here's the scoop on each one. Click the name of each to visit their website.

Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken (photos one and three): Gus's is located just a bit off Beale Street in downtown Memphis. It's worth the walk (twice) to get their chicken. There might be a wait. Give them your number, sit on one of the benches outside and wait for a text. You won't regret it.

Nashville Biscuit House (photo two): We didn't really visit Nashville on this trip. We just flew there and drove straight to Memphis. But we needed breakfast and stopped at the Biscuit House. It's on a sketchy looking road with lots of similar businesses with bars on the windows. It looked deserted from the outside but we found it packed on the inside. Can't explain that quite.

Cahawba House (photos four and six): That messy looking burger was almost just that. I don't understand the Texas toast instead of the bun. It doesn't do the same job as the bun in terms of keeping the filling between the bread. But I'll give them a pass based on the fried green tomatoes, the pimento cheese and the greens. Cahawba House is my one food regret from this trip. Their breakfast menu looks amazing. We just ran out of time to start our day there one morning.

Central BBQ (photo five): The whole plate of food at Central BBQ was awesome. The ribs. The onion rings. The greens. All of it. I'd go here every time I was in Memphis if I visited the city often (and after I had at least one meal at Gus's, of course). Central BBQ is a block away from the National Civil Rights Museum. Highly recommend a visit here. You can even leave the Museum and go back in after a meal if you want. We did. 

Doe's Eat Place (photo seven): The original Doe's is located in Greenville, Mississippi. We considered making the trip to Greenville on our Mississippi day but knew we'd have to cut out a couple of things on an already really long day if we did so we figured we'd wait until Little Rock. There are a number of other Doe's all around the area.

Central Restaurant (photo eight): We picked Central (not to be confused in any way with Central BBQ) as our fancy restaurant on this trip. We ate out back in the alley, which was definitely a great place for a meal if we didn't have to see the undesirable political flags on the deck of an adjacent building. If you order the pimento cheese appetizer, share it with someone. I didn't and it was really way too much food.

Saw's Soul Kitchen (photo ten): There are several Saw's restaurants in Birmingham. We picked the Soul Kitchen in the Avondale section of town (which took us past the awesome Sloss Furnaces site) based on their menu. The food here was good. I mean I had pimento cheese on fried chicken with greens on the side. After we were done at Saw's, we grabbed a couple of beers at the adjacent Avondale Brewing. If you have this same idea, I'd think twice. I thought both beers were forgettable.

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53

Today is my 53rd birthday. I haven't been out of the United States in 17 months and I haven't left North America for 21 months. But I am mask-free, vaccinated and have been healthy throughout a global pandemic that's lasted over a year. All things considered, I count all of that as very, very good news. I'm also so lucky that I haven't suffered any lasting personal loss due to this pandemic. I know there are so very many people out there, including some co-workers, who are not anywhere near as lucky as I have been. I count myself as very, very fortunate on this day.

About a year and a half ago, I would have guessed on this date that I'd be reminiscing about a trip to see some of California's most amazing National Parks and describing how life-changing an encounter with wild gorillas was during the past year. That ain't happening. We scuttled those two trips a long time ago as well as a couple of others we had planned even before I reached birthday number 52. 

Despite the risks and the fact that I worked 14 months at home after never having worked a full day at home before in my life, we did decide to travel during these past 12 months. Our decision to do this was not made lightly and we took what I consider to be precautions over and above what we needed to take to get where we decided to go. We also scrapped some planned trips when COVID cases started to spike. There's no way we were taking those kinds of risks. And, yes, we were travel shamed when we got back. I'll be glad when that cultural trend is in the rear view mirror.

I can't tell you how many possibilities we investigated before settling on the four trips (plus a weekend in Richmond and one in Pennsylvania) we packed into the last year in the United States. We looked at all sorts of scenarios in California; Boston to Rhode Island to Maine (before Maine decided to exclude tourists); Kansas City to Tulsa with maybe an extension down through Arkansas; countless variations of trips combining stops in Memphis, Alabama, Mississippi and maybe some other places; Los Angeles to Joshua Tree and back; the Hudson Valley; a northern Arizona jaunt; flying to Denver and driving to Mount Rushmore with a return trip through Nebraska; Chicago to Milwaukee to Iowa; and many more. I'm pretty much set for domestic trip ideas for the foreseeable future. And if four trips (plus weekends) seems a lot to be taking in a pandemic, maybe it was. But it was way less actual time on the road than we would have normally spent. And we did it way differently than we have traveled before.

So where did we end up? In splendid isolation out in National Parks in the Utah desert and Colorado mountains; in more National Parks in Wyoming and Montana; on three driving trips (we NEVER drive to vacations) to Vermont and Pennsylvania and Richmond; and a post-vaccine-waiting-period road trip through the American South. All USA trips. They were just the safest options. We could have gone further. We just didn't think that was worth the risk.

Standing on the Utah-Colorado border near Dinosaur, Colorado.

So an annual ritual on my birthday is taking stock of my goals for the current five year period. Not surprisingly, I have not made much progress, although there was some. Last year at this time I had two goals left: visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia and visit the remaining states in this country that I hadn't yet set foot in. I did not make it to Cambodia this past year (shocker, I know!) but I did manage one new state (Arkansas). One new state may not seem like a lot but when it takes your states remaining total from four to three, it's pretty significant. Watch out Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. Can't wait to see which is the last one. I have two more years.

The birthday post is also an opportunity to reflect on the best of the best in the past year and look forward to some exciting possibilities in the coming 12 months. Staying domestic didn't diminish the excitement in any way this past year. Highlights for me since last June 22 were our hike to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park; every single minute of our time in Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park; learning about maple syrup in Vermont; hanging out in Jackson, Wyoming; and cheesesteaks at Pat's in Philly and fried chicken at Gus' in Memphis. Not too shabby I'd say.

So what's the next year hold? Honestly, I'm not completely sure. I'm pretty confident we'll proceed with a trip to Maine this summer that's already booked and we have a notion about Vienna, Austria much later this year. Other than that? It's a bit of a fuzzy canvas, although it appears I will finally make it to Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House and I can't wait for my next cheesesteak at Pat's. If there's one way this pandemic has affected our travel, it's that we've delayed committing. At this point in past years, I'm sure we would already have trips for the next year already booked. This year, it's a bit more wait and see. I'm sure we'll be fine. And I already have like 12 or 14 domestic trips outlined ready to go at a moment's notice.

In many ways, we should count our blessings that if there was a country to be confined to and explore on a limited basis for 12 plus months, we had the United States. Yes, the federal government handled this pandemic disastrously, but the variety and quantity of amazing places to visit in our country is truly astonishing. We were able to get such varied experiences in a year limited to our nation's borders. Can't think of too many other places on this planet where we could have done that.

So that's it. Onward! Let's start seeing what's out there in year 54. I'm optimistic I'll be using my passport to travel somewhere soon. Just where it is I have no firm idea. Happy birthday to me!

Coplay Cement Company kilns in Pennsylvania. Didn't blog about these but still one of the cooler sites we visited last year.

Lynching

On February 1, 1893, a crowd estimated as at least 5,000 strong gathered at a train station in Texarkana, Arkansas to capture Henry Smith, a 17 year-old black handyman accused of murdering a three year-old white girl in Paris, Texas. Perhaps "capture" is the wrong word here. Law enforcement had already captured Smith; the crowd was looking to take possession of him and kill him, their minds already made up about the girl's death without really understanding any facts of the case. 

Faced with an angry mob representing overwhelming odds, the police guarding Smith handed him over, although he begged the officers to just shoot him rather than release him to the mob. The crowd took Smith and placed him in a cart, which they dragged through town to a custom-built scaffold erected specifically for his execution. They tied him to a stake and burned his body with hot irons, including gouging his eyes out and shoving a hot iron rod down his throat. They then (with Smith still alive) poured kerosene over his body and set the scaffold ablaze. At this point the crowd was significantly larger than 5,000, with some estimates putting the number of spectators cheering the events of that night at 15,000.

I believe travel is valuable because it brings you face to face with experiences and histories that you normally wouldn't encounter. That's not the only reason I travel but it's a big part of it. And sure, it's a lot more fun searching for wildlife in Africa or exploring ancient ruins in Mexico or South America or watching and playing sports in England and France or exploring food the world over than it is learning about the history of lynching in the United States. But sometimes the destinations and the subjects of those trips choose you.

If you had asked me six months ago to describe a typical lynching (I know...why would you ask me that but just go with this for a minute), I would have described it as a few white men (let's say two to four total) kidnapping a black man under cover of darkness and accused of some bogus crime and taking him to an isolated spot in the woods where there was no chance of anybody witnessing the murder. The murder, by the way, would always be a hanging. And the isolated spot would be involved so that by the time the body was found, there would be no chance of the lynchers being caught.

I now know that I am right. And that I am way wrong.

Lynching is one of the most disgusting parts of the history of the United States. It is exactly what I thought it was six months ago and it is way more brutal. I never would have conceived of a lynching like Henry Smith went through. Couldn't imagine. The sad part is Smith's lynching was short. He was tortured for just 50 minutes before he was killed. Others weren't so lucky. Some torturings were much more lengthy. 

Shootings. Being burned alive. Hangings. Beatings. Torture. Castration. In darkness. In daylight. By one or two men alone. By gangs of people including men, women and boys. With spectators. With photographers to sell postcards as souvenirs (sometimes body parts of the lynched people were sold as souvenirs also). And the targets of the lynching? Could be one man. Could be a group of men. Could be a woman or women. Could be children. Could be whole families, including babies. Could be anyone of dark complexion accused rightfully or wrongfully of any slight or crime or breaking of societal norms including not showing sufficient respect for any white person they encountered. I'm sure the words in this paragraph don't cover everything. Are you feeling sick yet?

The reckoning of America's lynching history has long been ignored. Go to the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama and you won't be able to ignore it any more.

In 1985, after graduating from Harvard Law School, 25 year old Bryan Stevenson headed south to work for the Southern Center for Human Rights, a non-profit law firm dedicated to fighting for the rights of people incarcerated in the South. Stevenson was assigned to the Alabama office. 10 years later he founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery and guaranteed the defense of any inmate in the state on death row. Alabama at that time was the only state that did not automatically provide funding for the defense of inmates on death row. It also led the nation in death row sentences per capita.

According to their website, the Equal Justice Initiative (or EJI) has successfully altered 135 wrongful convictions for inmates on death row in Alabama. The EJI has also successfully argued in some cases all the way to the United States Supreme Court for changes in the treatment and rights of prisoners suffering from dementia and life without parole sentences for children under the age of 18. If Stevenson's name rings a bell, maybe it's because Michael B. Jordan played him alongside Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillian in the movie Just Cause. McMillian was one of the first overturned convictions secured by Stevenson and the EJI.

Three years ago, the EJI opened two new cultural institutes: the Legacy Museum, an exhibit space centered around the principle that slavery and segregation has led to an historic imbalance in attitudes toward the guilt of black people in society reflected in disproportionate levels of incarceration, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is probably best described as a lynching memorial.

Strange though it may sound, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice was one of the first sites we put on our list when we contemplated a trip to the American South. Yes, we picked Montgomery, without really understanding what else there was to do there or around there, because there was a memorial to people who were lynched. I know, not a fun getaway destination attraction. This trip was about putting something other than fun first.

The Legacy Museum is a must see in downtown Montgomery. It addresses the issue of slavery translating to segregation and then to the creation of two distinct Americas - one white and one not white - through a fundamentally different lens than museums like the National Civil Rights Museum. It's not an accident. The focus is different. While both museums might start at the same point in time with the Middle Passage of the slave trade, their end points are not the same and their addressing truths about the role of race in our society is handled with a different narrative. Neither is wrong. They are telling a story which looks similar but ultimately is not.

There were two parts of the Legacy Museum that hit me hard, likely because even though we had toured sites and museums that talked about horrors of slavery and segregation, the Legacy Museum presented us with new information. The first of these was an interactive map of the southern portion of the United States, telling the story of more than 4,000 separate lynchings that had been uncovered by the EJI. Click on your state and then your county and you can find out who was lynched where and when. We live in Arlington County, Virginia and there are plenty of lynching sites in our state. It brought us no comfort to find that there were none documented in our county.

The second exhibit was a video of the EJI's work to improve conditions for inmates at St. Clair Correctional Facility in the county of the same name in Alabama. St. Clair is a maximum security, state penitentiary with a deserved reputation as one of the most violent, overcrowded and understaffed prisons in the United States. Honestly, it sounds like a free-for-all, where guards have abdicated responsibility for maintaining law and order in favor of allowing inmates to participate in a kind of survival of the fittest sort of exercise. Murders, shankings and inmates assigned way above their crime level on a temporary basis combined with guards providing some inmates with knives can't be what anyone in responsible charge of anything intended. Good for EJI here for trying to make a difference. The fact that someone has been convicted of a crime doesn't mean they deserve this kind of living environment, and that's assuming the conviction is the right verdict in the first place.

There is plenty to get upset about in the Legacy Museum. But the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a complete gut punch. 

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, unlike the Legacy Museum, is not located in downtown Montgomery, but instead maybe three quarters of a mile outside of town to the south on a bit of a hill. Truth be told, Montgomery is just not that big a city but the outside of town-ness is noticeable when heading to the Memorial. It removes all context when you enter the Memorial. 

Like most monuments or memorials, the concept behind the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is fairly simple. There's a winding path leading up a hill (albeit past a sculpture depicting a group of African men and women chained like animals and ready for sale, which is chilling) to a structure that appears square or C-shaped in plan with a series of rectangular boxes hanging from beneath the roof.

As you move closer to the Memorial, the boxes start to become more defined. They are what they appeared to be from afar: simple rectangular prisms maybe about six feet or more high and maybe 18" by 30" in the other two dimensions. They are made from COR-TEN steel that has rusted to the trademark burnt orange of that material. And there are words punched into one side of the boxes. At the top of each box is a county and state name; below that there are names of people, each with a date below the name. 

There is actually one box for every county in every southern state where the EJI has confirmed a lynching has taken place. The names and dates on the boxes are the names of victims and the dates they were lynched. The simplicity of that gesture of displaying the names of those who were unjustly murdered is powerful. It forces all of us to bear witness to the crimes committed and for those people to never be forgotten. There are more names than you can possibly read as you start walking through the field of COR-TEN pillars. The numbers hit you.

As you turn the first corner in the Memorial, the floor starts to slope down. But the boxes don't drop with the floor. They stay suspended from the roof at the same level. The effect is that you are walking through a field of boxes that are being raised slowly as you walk down the slope of the floor. You are walking through and then ultimately beneath the same kind of objects that you had ten minutes ago just been walking through at ground level. The hanging analogy is obvious and humbling.

By the time you make the second turn, you are maybe nine or ten feet below where you started and faced with a field of hanging boxes above you and all around you. The transformation is complete. The etched boxes which you started walking among on a equal footing are now completely suspended. They are now removed from you, you easily understand that these might be people and not just boxes.

As you make the walk down towards the third and final turn, there are accounts of lynchings on the walls on either side of you. William Stephens and Jefferson Cole lynched in Texas for refusing to abandon their land to white people. Caleb Gadly lynched in Kentucky for walking behind the wife of his white boss. Jack Brownlee lynched in Alabama for having a man arrested for attempting to assault his daughter. Warren Powell, aged 14, lynched in Georgia for frightening a white girl. Bud Spears lynched in Mississippi for protesting the lynching of another man. Jim Eastman lynched in Tennessee for not allowing a white man to beat him in a fight. 

None of that is about finding a punishment to fit a crime, and not just because there are no crimes committed by the murdered parties in the paragraph above. It's all done to let black people know their place in society. And that's most of what all lynching was about anyway.

The feeling I got from the Memorial was one of tacit confrontation. It's in your face because it's right there. There's no ignoring that these murders happened everywhere. It's factual and non-emotional while at the same time being a completely emotional and visceral experience. It's shameful to those people who look like me. Or at least it ought to be. Even if I (as an immigrant to this country in 1979) nor any of my ancestors had anything to do with these lynchings directly.

We attempted to find some counties in Virginia near to where we live and unfortunately there were some. There are documented lynchings in Loudoun County, which is less than 20 miles away from where we live. We found Loudoun County's COR-TEN box during a walk through the courtyard after our tour of the interior (meaning under the roof) portion of the Memorial. There are three names on it, which is three too many.

If you ever visit the Memorial and can't find your county or one near to you, don't worry. There are replica versions of all the hanging boxes laid down like coffins and organized by state along the exit walkway. There's plenty of time to read each and every name in each and every county where these crimes have occurred. It came as no surprise to us that the county where we were at the time, Montgomery County, Alabama, had a very long list of names.

I think there's a delicate balance to sites like this. There has to be enough information to get the point across but not too much that there becomes too much horror which would make you either terminate your experience early or end up just tuning out. I think the Memorial gets this balance right. It's not a complicated memorial but it gets its point across very effectively. There's an art to getting this stuff right.

Two years after opening the Legacy Museum and the Memorial for Peace and Justice, EJI opened a new Legacy Pavilion just slightly north of downtown Montgomery. There's a cafeteria and some other memorials out there. We made a point to stop by there so we'd have the complete EJI experience but neither the Pavilion nor the Museum match the straightforward power of the Memorial, although I wouldn't even think about skipping the Museum. It's a perfect precursor from a content and background point of view to a visit to the Memorial.

This is the last post I'm writing about racial inequality based on our trip to Memphis, Mississippi, Little Rock and Alabama this May. These have been difficult posts to write. There's not a lot of fun and joy in them. There's not even any justice in a site like the Memorial for Peace and Justice, despite its name. In my view, it's there to remind us not to forget and to memorialize those who did nothing really to deserve the fate that they received.

I don't really know what else to say here or how to close this one. I will say in many ways Montgomery was a completely normal and nice and livable small city. They have museums and monuments and great restaurants in an historic downtown. But it's got this history that is so despicable from the day it was founded all the way to today. The Legacy Museum is located in a former warehouse on a site where slaves used to be held for auction and there are signs in town noting Montgomery's place in the slave trade right next to a fountain that stands where the auctions used to take place. It has to be rough for anyone living and working there to get past that. Or maybe you get used to it, I don't really know. I don't think I could. There's probably no return trip to Montgomery in my future (although I have said that about places before and have gone back) and I know it wasn't a fun destination but the Memorial for Peace and Justice did turn out to be just what we expected, and that was a good thing here.

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How We Did It

The Legacy Museum and Memorial for Peace and Justice are both open Wednesday through Sunday. We needed timed tickets in advance before visiting either site, although that may have been pandemic-related. The tickets were free with a donation option (we did donate). The Legacy Pavilion keeps the same hours as the Museum and Memorial. We had some good food out there. Get the deep fried pork chop and avoid over-eating. There is a shuttle bus which operates between all three sites, although we believe it was not working this past May that we visited.

We allocated a full day to the experience of visiting all three EJI buildings, We started at 9 a.m. and it took us about four to five hours or so to get through all three sites. We definitely didn't need all day even though I think we covered all three sites in a fairly comprehensive manner with our 1 p.m. finish. The trip to these few sites is definitely worth it. There were few sites in the South that moved us in the way these three did. 

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The March (1965)

Americans like to talk a lot about freedom. Ever since I arrived in this country at the age of 11, I've been told over and over again that the United States is the most free country in the world. We have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to bear arms, democratic governments that are fairly elected and on and on and on. When it comes to talking about freedom, Americans are all in. In America you can do anything and go anywhere. It's completely free. Or so the talking points go.

So notwithstanding the fact that (1) there are plenty of other countries with similar freedoms all over the world; (2) that the United States has a brutal history of denying fundamental human rights to the people who were here before anyone else (Native Americans were not even granted citizenship until 1924!); and (3) the United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any country on the planet, you expressly cannot do anything and go anywhere in this country. Just like all other countries in the world, there are rules and you (generally speaking) have to follow them.

One of the rights that Americans love to point to as evidence of the fundamental best freedoms of this country of ours is the right to vote. One person, one vote is how the saying goes, right? And so it's with great irony that I have to point out that the United States has and continues to find all sort of ways to deny people the right to vote. What was that about being the most free, again?

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited discrimination in voting on the basis of race or previous condition of servitude. This Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, was intended to grant the right to vote to newly freed black men (not women; women were not guaranteed the right to vote until 1920!!). So just about as soon as the Fifteenth Amendment was passed (and black men started voting in some numbers), states in the South starting finding other ways to deny the vote to those new voters who tended to vote for different candidates than those already in power. 

How did the states do that? How about by requiring fees (or poll taxes) be paid; or by enforcing literacy tests; or by only allowing people to vote if their grandfather had voted. Restricting the vote wasn't based on race, the states claimed. Can't pay the fee? Can't answer the questions? Can't prove your grandfather voted? Well, then you can't vote either. Not race-based, was the story.

How many black men in the late 1800s had grandfathers who had voted? Not too many because their grandfathers were enslaved. Couldn't they just study and answer the questions, you might ask? I've seen some of the questions on these tests back then. I couldn't answer most of them and I'm not counting the "how many jellybeans in the jar?" and "how many bubbles in the bar of soap?" questions. Not kidding about those questions. They were actually on the test sometimes. And even if you DID get those questions right, the ultimate authority for agreeing with your answer was the state-appointed (white and likely segregationist) registrar.

30 or 40 years after the Civil War, pretty much the only citizens who were voting were wealthy and powerful white men who very much wanted to hold on to the power they already had. Heck, in 1965 in Alabama's Lowndes County whose population was 81% black, not a single black person was registered to vote. Not a single person. 95 years after the Fifteenth Amendment. 

By the 1960s, one of the biggest Civil Rights issues in the United States, and particularly the South, was black men and women, despite being legally permitted to vote, couldn't vote. Something had to be done.

So, before you think "wasn't the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed one year before the statistic you (meaning I) quoted?", well yes, it was. But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did nothing to register black voters or prevent states from imposing other silly rules to deny people the right to vote.

Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, Selma, AL. The start point for the third march.

So starting in the late 1950s, the Dallas County (Alabama) Voters League initiated an effort to increase voter registration in Dallas County. It didn't work very well. Registration was denied by registrars. DCVL leaders were beaten and almost killed by the Ku Klux Klan. Black businesses were boycotted. People trying to register to vote were arrested. Laws were passed prohibiting any group of people larger than two having a discussion about Civil Rights (that's not fiction by the way; there was such a law). Jobs were threatened. Or worse; when 32 black school teachers arrived at the County Courthouse in Selma to register to vote, they were all fired by the all-white School Board. In 1961, there were 15,000 or so eligible black voters in Dallas County. 130 of them were registered to vote. In a county that was 57% black.

Something else had to be done. 

In neighboring Perry County, a march was proposed. A night march. And, of course, things quickly got out of hand. Perry County officials made the decision to shut off all the streetlights that night. Then they called in the Alabama State Troopers who, with darkness to conceal their actions, proceeded to beat up the marchers. At some point a protestor named Jimmie Lee Jackson fled the march with his mother and grandfather. Troopers followed them into a cafe and started assaulting his mother and grandfather. When he blocked their path to protect his family, the Troopers shot him in the stomach. Eight days later he was dead.

A new march was proposed. This one from Selma all the way to the State Capitol in Montgomery. 54 miles. Longer march, greater visibility. March 7, 1965. Sunday.

The marchers knew they would be in violation of the injunction preventing three or more people gathering for the purposes of discussing Civil Rights. There were over 500 of them. They did it anyway. That law had no place in American democracy in the first place. And sure enough, those in power responded. Governor George Wallace ordered the march to be stopped by any means necessary, citing a danger to traffic. County Sheriff Jim Clark ordered all white men over 21 to report to the county courthouse and be deputized. That group, fully armed, along with Alabama State Troopers, gathered on the other side of the Alabama River from downtown Selma and waited for the marchers to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge. Selma, Alabama.

What happened next turned March 7, 1965 into Bloody Sunday. When the marchers reached the other side of the Pettus Bridge they were told to turn back. Then, with no warning and no provocation other than they were just there, they were attacked by the police with tear gas and nightsticks. Some were beaten unconscious after being knocked down. Men, women, 14 year old girls. Didn't matter. They were all attacked. 17 people were hospitalized after being beaten by law enforcement. The whole thing was photographed and was worldwide the next morning.

While it brought widespread outrage in the United States, Bloody Sunday didn't solve anything. So the march organizers intended to try again two days later, along with a court order to prohibit police stopping the marchers. The appeal for the court order didn't go as planned. Instead of getting a piece of paper preventing the police from interfering, the marchers got hit with a restraining order preventing them from walking. The Johnson administration tried to negotiate a compromise: have the march but turn back after reaching the other side of the river. That's what happened and that didn't solve anything either. The marchers felt betrayed by the agreement they had no part in negotiating.

Apparently, there were others who were angered by the march on "Turnaround Tuesday". That night, four Ku Klux Klan members armed with clubs beat a group of white ministers in town to support the marchers as punishment for just being in Alabama. One of the ministers, James Reeb, was beaten so badly that he slipped into a coma. Two days later he was dead. I know I've written before in this blog that I have no idea how someone can beat another person to the point of non-responsiveness when they are not fighting back but I just can't imagine how someone could do that. The four men who murdered Reeb were found, indicted and tried. It took a jury less than 90 minutes to acquit all four. The jury was all-white, if that really needed explaining.

The nation, shocked by the murder of a white man in Alabama (but not by the murder of a black man in pretty much the same location three weeks earlier), was moved to action. Within days of Beeb's death, President Johnson demanded passage of the Voting Rights Act. Two days later the court order protecting the marchers (which was sought but denied for the second march) was received along with a message for the State of Alabama that they had no right to deny assembly for the purposes of protest.

On March 21, 1965, the third march started from the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma. This time, they made it all the way to Montgomery. It took five days but they made it all the way to the State Capitol.

The Alabama State Capitol, Montgomery.

Today, the March route from Selma to Montgomery is still anchored at one end by the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church and by the Alabama State Capitol at the other. The Edmund Pettus Bridge, perhaps the most recognizable and visible symbol of the events of all three marches (particularly because that is the site of Bloody Sunday) is also still standing spanning the Alabama River. We set out one Friday morning this May from Montgomery for Selma so we could trace the same route that the marchers took in 1965, although honestly, there was no way we were walking. Toyota Camry gets the job done much quicker.

Selma, like some other towns in Alabama that we visited in our time down south, looks like a place that time has passed by. The historic Broad Street that defines the center of town is occupied by businesses that fill every other or maybe every third storefront. Empty shops and offices boarded up or just there with broken glass where windows used to be make up the rest of the street front. Step off Broad Street and things aren't much different, although the odds of finding structures overcome by trees or vines definitely increases significantly. 

A walk across the Pettus Bridge (Edmund Pettus, by the way, was an officer in the Confederate States Army and a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan; just saying...) is a rite of passage for anyone retracing the Selma to Montgomery march. We started there, just after stopping in to the Selma Interpretive Center, the westernmost point of the National Park Service's Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. It was the most walking we did in the entire day and I suppose there's some irony in that but we managed to get some sense of what the start of all three marches was like. Of course, in our case, there was no line of angry, all-white police blocking the way from what is really a pretty narrow four-lane bridge. It would have been incredibly easy for not that many law enforcement officers (and newly deputized whites who could legally drink) to block off one end of the bridge.

The map from Selma to Montgomery. From the Lowndes County Interpretive Center.

From Selma (and with the Selma Interpretive Center mostly closed and the Voting Rights Museum on the other side of the Pettus Bridge fully closed...global pandemic, you know...), we headed east back towards Montgomery. Most of the 54 miles walked by the marchers were along U.S. Highway 80, a two lane each way highway passing through absolutely nothing except Alabama countryside. Maybe there's a house or farm or two along the way but it's easy today to imagine what it would have been like in 1965 because I'm pretty sure there was lots of nothing on either side of the road back then. Other than widening the highway, I'm not sure much has changed.

Since the march was planned to take parts of five days, the marchers walking from Selma to Montgomery would need to stop for the night. Or four nights. Given the landscape we saw on our drive along the march route, that meant camping in fields, which presumably were privately owned which meant that the marchers would need the consent of property owners along the way. They found at least three: David Hill (night one), Rosie Steele (night two) and Robert Gardner (night three). There is a sign on each property today noting their part in supporting the marchers with their hospitality. The fourth night was spent on the campus of Saint Jude Hospital near Montgomery.

There was risk to those who hosted the marchers. Allowing any accommodation to a group of people trying to raise awareness of the voting rights of black people deep into Klan country was a dangerous decision. Threats of violence from neighbors and strangers alike were not uncommon. Rosie Steele's store (where she also lived) was burned down some time after the march. Retribution, I'm sure. For letting people camp on her property.

The signs for Campsites 1 and 2. Along Highway 80.

Other than the signs indicating the marchers camped at each site, there is no evidence of anything from 1965 happening at each property. I mean why would there be? These were temporary, one-night camps on private property for a small number of people (the marchers were limited to 300 along the single lane road portion of the route where campsites one through three were located). There was nothing remarkable to save after each night. Even at the City of Saint Jude, which hosted a concert featuring Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez and others the night the marchers passed through, needed to be restored to its pre-camp condition so it could continue to function as a hospital.

Despite the fact that there is nothing really to see, we stopped at all four sites along the way, in addition to the Lowndes County Interpretive Center (which was unfortunately closed when we visited) about mid-way en route. I think it was important we try to connect with each place along the way, even if that meant pulling a couple of U-turns on the way back to see a sign on the other side of the highway.

The signs for campsites 3 and 4.

Our trip from Selma to Montgomery ended just where it did for the marchers in March 1965: the Alabama State Capitol. After the marchers passed the City of St. Jude, they picked up a lot of supporters. No longer was this a pack of people limited to 300 by judicial ruling; the crowd that approached the Capitol was more like 25,000 strong over the last five miles or so.

The Alabama State Capitol is just like most other state capitols: a white, neoclassical building topped by a dome erected on some sort of hill or rise. To the west of the building there sits the Alabama Bicentennial Park, which features a series of bronze plaques detailing the history of the State of Alabama from its founding to the date of the Park dedication in 2019. To their credit, there are two plaques that talk about segregation and Civil Rights and while both discuss those two issues in a non-emotional and not really apologetic tone, they are at least there. Of course, there's also a statue of Jefferson Davis, who led the fight against the United States government during his time as President of the Confederate States of America so there's that too...

We didn't enter the Capitol building. The marchers weren't permitted inside in 1965 so we didn't feel the need to take a walk around anyway. I'm sure there's been much more happened inside that building that we'd object to than we'd be in favor of. Really didn't have any interest. While a line of policemen didn't block our path like they did for the marchers, the result was the same.

"Marching To Montgomery" sculpture in front of the City of St. Jude, site of the last camp for the Selma marchers.

On August 6. 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law. That act, which generally prohibits racial discrimination in voting, was likely a direct consequence of the events of Bloody Sunday in Selma. 56 years later, we still haven't solved the issue. Maybe one day.

This is the last post of our trip to the South that is about the events of the Civil Rights Movement of then 1950s and 1960s. I know I've only written five posts total. I tried to capture the more violent, senseless and shocking events (to me) in the last four I've written and provide an overview of everything else we saw in the first. In many ways, the events in Selma provided a direct and noticeable change and I guess that makes it more satisfying than the murder of Emmitt Till, the fight to keep the Little Rock Nine out of high school and the senseless acts of violence committed against the Freedom Riders. But if there's one thing the events of 2020 proved to us, it's that this issue is still around today.

I think if there's a frustration with visiting most all of the Civil Rights sites we drove to in early May, it's that there's very little "there" there. The events that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were ephemeral. Most events took place in open fields or on street corners or in front of churches or government buildings. If there was actual evidence of the fight to move towards the end of racial discrimination or the crimes committed to prevent that, most all of it has been swept under the rug in shame or a desire to cover things up. Sometimes that doesn't make for good pictures in blog posts.

Despite all that, I continue to think it is worthwhile to see where these events happened, if for no other reason that just to bear witness to history after the fact. The drive to Selma and back to Montgomery for me in May reinforced the length of the march and the obstacles the marchers faced along the way. And just like driving through rural Mississippi a few days prior, I again got that vibe that something was incredibly off here not too far in the past. I'm sure it was my imagination, just like it was in Mississippi. Or maybe not.

If you do ever make that same drive we made last month, I hope there are more places open. I particularly regret the two National Park Service Interpretive Centers being not fully open. I also hope you stop at two other spots along the way: memorials to Viola Liuzzo and Elmore Bolling.

Viola Luizzo was a housewife from Detroit who drove down from Michigan to assist with the march from Selma to Montgomery. She volunteered to drive people arriving into the area to participate in the march from bus stations and airports to the march sites. On the night of March 25, 1965 she was pursued in her car by four members of the Ku Klux Klan (actually three members of the Klan and an FBI informant) who shot and murdered her from their vehicle. Voila was 39 years old.

Elmore Bolling (whose memorial sign is shown in the photograph above) was the successful owner of a store and trucking business. According to the sign, Bolling's success was deemed by whites in the area to be "too successful to be a Negro." So on December 4, 1947, Bolling was shot dead with pistol and shotgun I guess so his murderers would feel better about their own place in the world. Elmore, like Viola, was 39 years old.

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How We Did It

When I pulled together our agenda for our drive to Selma and then back to Montgomery, I had six sites on my list: the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church; the Pettus Bridge; the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute; the National Park Service Selma and Lowndes County Interpretive Centers; and the Alabama State Capitol. We knew the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church would not be open to visitors and unfortunately the Voting Rights Museum and the Lowndes County Interpretive Center were closed due to the global pandemic and the Selma Interpretive Center was closed beyond the gift shop and bathrooms for the same reason. Oh well.

Despite being mostly closed, our 15 or 20 minutes or so inside the Selma Interpretive Center were invaluable. We learned there about the four campsites and the memorials to Viola Liuzzo (even though we didn't find her) and Elmore Bolling. The quick discussion and orientation we got there made our day so much more informative. If that Center had been closed, our day would have consisted of nothing between Selma and the State Capitol. The understanding of what happened between the start and end wouldn't have been the same without stopping at the campsites, even though there is basically nothing to see there. It's all about being there.

The two interpretive centers in Selma and Lowndes County are both normally (in non-pandemic situations) open Monday through Saturday between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Check the situation before you head out. Current opening status can be found on the National Park Service's Selma To Montgomery National Historic Trail website.

In case these places are closed, or you visit on a Sunday, the four campsites and Liuzzo and Bolling memorials can be found as follows:

• Campsite 1 is located maybe a half a mile off U.S. Highway 80. While traveling towards Montgomery, take a right on Dallas County Route 67 then take the first left. The sign for Campsite 1 is located on a property a little way down on the right. You can't really miss it. 
• Campsite 2 is located between mile markers 108 and 109 on the opposite side of U.S. Highway 80 when traveling in the Selma to Montgomery direction. It's pretty much right after the Lowndes County Interpretive Center. 
• The Voila Liuzzo Monument is located on the side of U.S. Highway 80 in the Selma to Montgomery direction near mile marker 111. 
• The Elmore Bolling sign is located on the side of U.S. Highway 80 in the Selma to Montgomery direction near mile marker 114.
• Campsite 3 is located on the side of U.S. Highway 80 in the Selma to Montgomery direction at the intersection of the Highway and Frederick Douglass Road in Burkeville, Alabama.
• Campsite 4 can be found by plugging "City of St. Jude Montgomery Alabama" into Google Maps and then going where the app tells you to go.

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