We started our tour of Montgomery by driving to the visitor center downtown. They were very helpful in giving us a map of the city and showing us the principle sites. Our first impression of downtown Montgomery is of a city that at one time was very active. But now we see a lot of empty and for-sale buildings, and the streets are pretty quiet. Looking online it appears that the population has been slowly shrinking these past 10 years. Strange because there is a big Hyundai factory and air force base nearby. Maybe people have been moving to the outskirts. Here we found, though, some very special museums/monuments such as the Rosa Parks Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Legacy Museum, the Dexter Baptist Church, the Freedom Riders Museum and others.
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| Visitor center |
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| Walk underground to the river front |
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| Riverfront temporarily closed due to flooding, but the tunnel was neat :) |
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| Good vegetarian lunch at the Mellow Mushroom restaurant |
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| Court square fountain downtown |
After walking around downtown our first visit is to the Rosa Parks museum. Very interesting museum with a neat audio/video demonstration that shows just what it was like when Rosa was getting on the bus, the discussion with the driver and then the arrest. It showed step by step what happened and how all the people around were reacting. Learning about the history of what happened next, the 1 year boycott, the courage of the African Americans, and how Martin Luther King Jr. came to be a leader, was really inspiring.
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| Entrance |
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| Francesca by Rosa Parks statue in entrance |
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| The audio/video experience with the life size bus |
After the Rosa Parks museum we visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This memorial recognizes the terrorism of racist lynching that took place from 1877 (when the Union soldiers left the south) for the next 100 years.
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| Statues in the first part of the monument |
The main monument consists of hanging rectangular steel boxes with the name of the county and people hanged in that county. There are over 800 boxes and over 4000 names. It is a very powerful and emotional place.
You walk through the sculptures and then slowly the ground descends until you are walking under them and reach a long dark wall with a waterfall that flows on and off, commemorating the thousands of lynchings that were not documented.
To the side of the monument are the same sculptures, with duplicate county names and victim names. These memorials are here temporarily and are destined for counties that file a claim to have them displayed in the county itself. We heard that 70% of the counties have so far claimed a memorial.
In the past year over 300 more lynchings have been discovered by researchers. California has 2 documented black lynchings that took place in Kern county.
We left the memorial and headed back downtown to visit the Legacy Museum (photography not allowed). This museum follows the timeline of slavery, lynchings, the civil rights period to mass incarceration. There are various audio/visual displays that explain this history. In particular one area of the museum has recreated prison visitor windows. When you pick up the phone the image of the prisoner's face begins to speak, and then you hear about the prison conditions, the long sentences for minor crimes, etc...
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