March 26 – March 29, 2019: Tom and I found ourselves in the middle of the Civil Rights monuments and memorials in the Montgomery area of Alabama. Yet again, history I feel I should know and understand, but perhaps wasn’t on my radar growing up in the 60-s and 70’s in Missoula, MT. That being said, I am so thankful that I am able to re-learn it now.
We also camped 2 nights in the Monte Sane State Park outside of Huntsville where met up with old friends from England, Stu and Sarah Connor. We need to go back to Huntsville and Alabama in general as we didn’t bother with sight seeing since our camp ground was so beautiful and relaxing. Hard to believe I gave up the opportunity to see the Space Museum and relaxed in stead!!
Selma to Montgomery National Historical Trail: I think many of us are at least somewhat familiar with this story as it was memorialized for the 50th anniversary in the Emmy winning movie, “Selma”, where Dr. Martin Luther King lead what turned into three marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to bring attention and secure the right to vote for black people in Alabama and the “Voting Rights Act”. While the 15th Amendment from 1870 prohibited federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” states and counties in the South were notorious for inflicting many additional rules that prevented many people from voting, especially black people in the south.
The first march across the bridge encountered hundreds of law enforcement officers halting the march, which resulted in violence and lead the to term, “Bloody Sunday”. The third march finally allowed the marchers to walk the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery and eventually led to President Johnson signing the “Voting Rights Act,” which prohibits discrimination in voting practices based on race and color.
When we arrived that the interpretive center in Selma, we serendipitously where directed to a talk that was given to a large group of college students traveling the Civil Rights trail given by Joanne Bland, who was 11 at the time of the marches and actually participated in them. Too bad I didn’t get a photo of Joanne, but I wasn’t sure we were even supposed to be at the talk!
Montgomery: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is also known as the “Lynching Memorial” is a newly opened memorial that focus on lynching’s from post Civil War through 1950s. It accompanies The Legacy Museum, which details the history of the black slave market in Montgomery and the Domestic Slave Trade (we learned about in Natchez, MS), through legalized racial segregation, and mass incarceration of the 1990s and into today.
The photos are from the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. We weren’t allowed to take photos in the Legacy Museum. The 800 steel rectangular monuments hanging from the ceiling of the memorial represent each county in the US where racial lynching took place. There are over 4000 African American men, women and children represented on these steel monuments and many more that went unnamed and more that they are adding to the memorial.
Huntsville Area: We camped up at the Monte Sano State Park just up the hill outside of Huntsville. It was so lovely that we didn’t bother with any sight seeing in Huntsville other than a great lunch and visit with Stewart and Sarah Connor,
The Traveling Lounsburys 
Interesting pics, all. Thanks for sharing. You and Sarah look like you coordinated your outfits that day. Safe travels!
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What an education. Isn’t it amazing what we don’t know or remember? This is quite the adventure
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