Bloody Sunday at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1964 was a violent chapter in the voting rights fight. Black demonstrators requesting their legal right to vote were beaten by police as they crossed.
It was our personal goal to cross this bridge. Yona and Ed walked with us in the rain.
At the end of the bridge where the marchers were met by state and local lawmen with clubs and tear gas.
At the site of the beatings is a Memorial Park with a plaque honoring John Lewis, now a US Senator from GA who was badly beaten that horrible Sunday.
The rain eclipsed our Segway reservation – too dangerous. We visited the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald home in Montgomery where they lived 8 happy months with their daughter, Scottie, and where he wrote Tender is the Night. So much history – much of it sad…his books not popular during their lifetimes but now continue to be read and made into films.
The Montgomery Riverfront is a happening place – river boat, restaurants, the place to be.
Would you believe that April 26 is CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY in Alabama, a state holiday . Mercifully we saw no Confederate Flags but we did see the State Capital where the Confederacy began. Jefferson Davis, who was elected president of the Confederacy lived in this “White House” – now filled w/ memorabilia and stories.
The Tuskegee Airman’s National Historic Site enabled determined Negroes, not previously allowed to fly, to become fighter pilots starting in 1941. “This is the place where we learned to fly, we became pilots, we became officers.” On display is one of their famous Red Tail P-51 Mustang fighter planes. Film and interviews tell stories of the men of the squadron who served successfully and honorably.
On to Tuskegee University – big beautiful brick campus, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881 – now educating about 3200 students. We had a private tour of the Legacy Museum located in the Bioethics building. The United States Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study in the Negro Male and an exhibit about the HeLa Cells of Henrietta Lacks, the cells that will not die. Bioethics indeed.
Old Alabama Town – buildings from all eras moved to Montgomery – here’s the 1892 schoolhouse complete with teacher and paddle.
