Today we toured historic downtown Montgomery Alabama: First by tourist trolley and then by foot. We literally walked in the footsteps of history: The history of Alabama as a state. The history of the Confederacy as Jefferson Davis was inaugurated in 1861. History continues nearly a hundred years later when the civil rights movement started here with a young lady named Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955. Again in March of 1965 with the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march.
History happens around us every day. Usually we are either too close or too far away to notice. Since everyone knows that I am older than dirt, I can admit to remembering the days when the civil rights things were starting to “pop.” I can’t say I actually remember the Rosa Parks event, but then I was only 13 at the time. I do remember the march on Montgomery, and I remember wondering incredulously that any adult in our nation could be denied the right to vote. I still can’t understand why anyone would not bother to vote either, but that is a different soap box.
What keeps getting hammered home at one civil war memorial after another is the brutality of it all. At Port Columbus Georgia we saw the ingenuity the Confederacy used to try to relieve the strangle hold the North had on their shipping. The ship we have known as the Merrimac is more properly called the CSS Virginia. The North caught wind of the South rebuilding the captured Merrimac as the ironclad Virginia and they rushed the development of the Monitor in a record ninety days. What panic the North experienced when the Virginia sailed up alongside their state-of-the-art war ships and blew them out of the water with total impunity. The Monitor arrived only one day later to defend the fleet, and the classic battle between ironclads ensued and was fought to a draw. What we didn’t know was the rush to build many of these new ironclad ships on both sides. In the south whole railroad lines were ripped up to supply the steel. But it was all too little and too late.
We even explored some more modern history. We walked by the site of the now torn-down theater where Hank Williams Sr. won his first talent contest as Luke the Drifter. Now that is holy ground indeed. I sang a few bars of “Jambalaya” as we walked by the Hank Williams Museum.
Somehow walking the same streets, seeing the same buildings and putting the events in context makes the history come alive like nothing a text book can do. You can visit the actual church, The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor and where the Montgomery bus boycott was organized on December 2, 1955. Incredibly this church is so small and it is so close to the Alabama Capitol building. Remember this was where Jefferson Davis was inaugurated to lead the Confederacy in their fight for the right of each state to determine the issue of slavery. What an incredible irony. Can we expect our God to act any less dynamically in our own lives? History happens all around us every day. Are we listening?
Well; So it is! That is what we are up to. There are photos beow of the Alabama Capitol and Judy on the steps of the Dexter Avenue Church.
Meanwhile we send our love to all our friends and relatives back home.
Bye now, Gary and Judy
