Our first destination of 2019 was a modest drive from Tuscaloosa up to Birmingham to visit old friends and make a side trip to Montgomery to explore the rich civil rights history of Alabama’s capital city.
The pendulum of Montgomery’s racial history swings a wide arc. It’s the city of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace – and of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Judge Frank Johnson.
In the early 19th century, Montgomery was the hub of the Alabama slave trade. In a backroom deal in 1846 that typifies Alabama politics then and now, the state legislature selected Montgomery to replace Tuscaloosa as the state capital. Fifteen years later, Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America on the steps on the new capitol building in Montgomery. On the same spot, in 1963, newly-inaugurated Governor George Wallace vowed, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
As Wallace snarled those infamous words, he could see, two blocks down the street from where he was speaking, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, which then was already a hub of the modern civil rights movement that was shifting the ground under the feet of Wallace and his ilk. In 1955, the church selected a new pastor, 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. Later that year, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a municipal bus to a white person, and Dr. King was selected by the local NAACP chapter to lead the black community’s bus boycott to protest Jim Crow segregation laws. The church was the site of public meetings and private strategy sessions throughout the boycott, which started as a one-day protest but ultimately lasted more than one year, as the city vowed never to give in to the protesters (sound familiar?).
Approximately six months into the boycott, just a few blocks from both the church and the state capitol building, a newly-appointed Federal District Judge, Frank M. Johnson, cast the deciding vote on a three-judge panel ruling that Montgomery’s bus segregation law was unconstitutional under the then-recent precedent of Brown v. Board of Education. When the panel’s lower court decision was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery City Council passed an ordinance eliminating racial criteria from bus seating, ending the 381-day boycott.
Now named the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the church conducts a wonderful tour showing Dr. King’s office as well as the sanctuary and pulpit where history was made.
Less than a half-mile from the church is the Frank M. Johnson Federal Courthouse. Although Time magazine put his portrait on its cover in 1967 and called him ”one of the most important men in America”, Judge Johnson is on the honor roll of unsung heroes of Alabama’s civil rights movement (along with the likes of E.D. Nixon of Montgomery and Fred Shuttlesworth and Chuck Morgan of Birmingham). In 1965, he enjoined Wallace’s prohibition of a 25,000-person march from Selma to Montgomery, which was a catalyst for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Judge Johnson also ordered the desegregation of public schools and colleges, parks, libraries, museums, depots, airports, restaurants, restrooms and other public places, as well as the Alabama State Police. Other decisions by the Judge cleared the way for registering black voters, outlawed poll taxes, struck down bans on blacks and women serving on juries, expanded the rights of the poor to court-appointed lawyers, and issued the first anti-gerrymandering court order in the nation’s history. Ironically, he and Wallace were classmates at the University of Alabama School of Law, which didn’t prevent Wallace from calling Johnson an ”integratin’, carpetbaggin’, scalawaggin’, baldfaced liar.” (Where have we heard name-calling like that recently?)
Last April, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery. It has already received worldwide attention as a powerful tribute to the victims of racial lynchings in America. Most of the components of the monument are hanging objects. Walking around the memorial for even a half-hour leaves you emotionally wrung out – take it from me. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/lynching-memorial-montgomery-alabama/index.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/28/lynching-memorial-backlash-montgomery-alabama
On a lighter note, while I was in Montgomery I had lunch with two law school classmates, Mary Lil Owens and Bill Little. It was great to catch up with the two of them and with news about other classmates. It makes us look forward to our 40th class reunion this spring.
Back in Birmingham, I got to see two nearly-life-long friends, John Hall and Bent Owens, plus Ginny and I had an evening of good food and good cheer with Livy and James Abele (I’ve “only” known Livy since high school). Old friends are the best friends!
Then it was on to Rocket City – Huntsville, AL. In 1950, over 200 German scientists and engineers, led by Wernher von Braun, who defected to the U.S. at the end of World War II, were brought by the U.S. Army to Huntsville to form the Ordnance Guided Missile Center. Huntsville became an integral resource in the development of the rockets that powered the U.S. space program. There’s a wonderful museum containing lots of artifacts that recalled my excitement and passion for NASA and the space race in the 60s!
Huntsville is far from a one-dimensional place, however. In fact, it’s one of the coolest cities we’ve explored during our entire trip – brewpubs, great restaurants, scenic vistas, a factory-turned-craft-center, and even an axe-throwing gallery (who know that was a thing?)! It’s full of construction cranes and vacant lots surrounded by fencing saying, “Coming Soon…” At the rate it’s growing, it soon will be the largest city in Alabama. Plus, the sun came out while we were there, after two woefully soggy weeks!!
The highlight of our time in Huntsville (other than getting to spend so much time with our hosts, Woody and Myra Sanderson) was our night at the town’s performing arts theater to see the hilarious musical Kinky Boots. It’s a special evening when you see an audience of Alabamians give a standing ovation to a show about transvestites.
On the other hand, the lowlight of our time in Huntsville, of the entire trip and of my recent lifetime was having to watch the Alabama-Clemson game. Okay, it wasn’t all horrible – it was nice to see Bobby and Cathy Wooldridge, who drove up from Tuscaloosa to watch the game. But that’s it. It was bad enough that, for the second time in three years, an undefeated Alabama season ended in a loss in the championship game (both to the Auburn With A Lake School), but to go thud by 28 points was…well, I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Still in semi-shock the morning after the game, we were up and on the road at 5:00am to drive from Huntsville to Red Bay, AL, home of Tiffin Motor Homes. We lucked into an earlier-than-expected service appointment to take care of a few nagging things we’ve been driving around with, but it meant we had to get to Red Bay by 7:00am. There’s no bay in Red Bay, nor is there much of anything else there, so when our punch list of items got fixed, we immediately headed to Music City – Nashville.
It was great to have you both with us. Y’all come back now, ya hear!
The axe throwing looks as dangerous as my dart game 😉