Day 5 (3/30/23): Birmingham, AL to Jackson, MS

 Laura’s Post 

Well, if Montgomery had built some optimism and amazement about powerful truth telling as a step towards healing, reconciliation and justice, Birmingham squelched it. Don’t get me wrong, Birmingham treated us so well: wonderful hotel, beautiful city, fantastic food (shout out to Hot and Hot Fish Club and Saw’s BBQ), but the tour of Birmingham was chilling. Red Clay Tours was absolutely outstanding, but he didn’t hold back any punches of the brutal history of this city, which earned the name “Bombingham” in the 1950’s and 1960’s, due to white supremacists preferred method of intimidation in this town. 

In 3 hours he painted the unrelenting legacy of the 20th century struggle for Black freedom in Birmingham, starting in the 1920’s, when the international Communist party recognized Black Americans as an oppressed people and began organizing in places like Birmingham. The local legend here from the 1950’s is a preacher named Fred Shuttlesworth, who rejected the notion that suffering was the prescribed existence on earth and fought segregation tooth and claw. He often clashed with Dr. King, who went for more singular, strategic battles, where as Shuttlesworth felt he would settle for nothing less that the complete annihilation of segregation. This made him a target of bombings, including one that made him a legend in his community, in which a bomb as thrown essentially right outside his bedroom on Christmas night 1956, which exploded, throwing him across the room and the front of the house collapsed on top of him. He emerged from the smoking rubble of his house to the amazement of his neighbors, who then decided he was sent by divine intervention to lead them to freedom. His church pictured blow and the frame of his prior house (above), which was never repaired after the bombing. 

But did freedom ever come to Birmingham? It’s a little less clear to me now. The history books will honor the hard work of those who in the Spring of 1963, organized thousands of Black children on the font-lines who went to jail by the thousands after facing dogs and fire hoses, all in a campaign to de-segregate the lunch counters of the downtown department stores, which culminated with the fall from power of the oppressive Chief of Police Bull Connor. However maybe reality is a little messier. In the wake of the 1960’s desegregation efforts, White flight from the city took much of the capitol and the city has been losing both population and economic power since then. Though its Mayor and City Council now reflect the ~ 70% Black city, their laws (including efforts to raise minimum wage and remove Confederate Statues … despite the fact that Birmingham was never a city until after the Civil War …), are crippled by the conservative (predominantly White, conservative) state legislature. It’s a state where in present day, Roy Moore, a judicial legend made famous by twice being removed from office by the Feds for first, refusing to take down a statue of the 10 commandments out of his office, and next after he was removed and then re-elected, for refusing to acknowledge marriage equality, and barely lost his 2016 Senate election by 1% to someone who had finally brought the culprits of the 1963 Birmingham Church bombing which killed 4 little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church to justice because Moore was accused of soliciting sex from a minor. (But it all better now right? Maybe not so much … one of Alabama’s current Senators thinks the 3 branches of the Federal government are the House, the Senate and the Executive and the other proposed legislation to arrest Anthony Fauci). 

Oh, and the bombings continue here. Though the last “Civil Rights” motivated bombing in Birmingham was in 1965, modern day bombings have evolved to include mail bombings of state judges and abortion clinics. 

 

Wow, big dose of history. I’ll end it by noting that when our tour guide was probed repeatedly at the end of our tour if he has hope for Birmingham or Alabama, he said “what good thing has ever happened in Alabama from emancipation to Reconstruction to voting rights that the Federal government didn’t explicitly force Alabama to do.” He painted a picture of ravaged, poor (predominantly Black) neighborhoods for whom the good working class jobs are gone (steel) and some of whose neighborhoods are now a superfund site. 

This all feels a little bit like a gut punch for anyone rooting for the underdog of justice to make a fearsome comeback in the end. But it’s that sentiment alone that gives me pause. Our guide called this out today, and it’s a theme that has been recurring on this trip: why is it that we only have tolerance for the rose-colored Hollywood fairy tale where the “good guy” wins in the end? Perhaps it’s another legacy of White supremacist thought that White people carry in this country. “Let’s not talk about that hard stuff, it’s so unpleasant …” But that is not what life is and that is not what history is. It’s brutal and it’s hard, and if we want to be part of a meaningful change we need to open our eyes, and roll up our sleeves and get right down in it. As Malcom Gladwell notes in his podcast Revisionist History, “why does everyone in this country want to remove the suffering from the story?” This does nothing to honor those who have fought and died for causes like Civil Rights and does not prepare those of us who are late to the game for the resilience we will need to carry on. 

I loved everything about our Birmingham tour, even the soul shattering. And I really liked the sentiment he left us with. Asked repeatedly what he had learned in his Alabama Public Schools about this material, he deflected this saying it is not on teachers in isolation to teach this history. They’ve done the best they can with the resources given, which are never enough. He repeatedly asserted that it’s up to us to go looking for the truth. And that’s what he did in 2016, when he read the book below, “Carry Me Home” about the tortured legacy of Birmingham, information which he had never heard before, and then promptly moved home to lead tours. There is much resistance still in his city to even the existence of his tours.

But good news guys, I found the source of White Power. Let’s take it down.

A slightly less heavy aside, things that are unexpected about Alabama: 

• Styrofoam lives on!
• There are vegetables here, I have confirmed it. (They are just coupled with meat)
• I see no Trump 2024 or Confederate flags anywhere (there’s more of those in Cle Elum, Washington than what I’ve seen in Alabama thus far)
• Initially put off by being everyone’s “darling,” I watched a gas station clerk “darling” everyone up and down my line, Black/White, Old/Young alike. And now I rather like it 

BOOKS: 

• Carry Me Home - haven’t read it, but it’s the book that caused our tour guide to quit his job in 2016 move home to Birmingham and give Civil Rights tours 

PODCASTS:

• Revisionist History (by Malcolm Gladwell): The Birmingham Foot Soldier - the untold story of the famous photo and statue above (*it doesn’t end like you think it will)
• Revisionist History: State v. Johnson - this is a really intense story that involves a story about rape, so be warned if you listen. But an important hard story about how understanding where the power lies is the key to any story or history. 

Day 4 from Peter

 Laura pretty much said it all but I’ll riff off her a bit.  The Legacy Museum is more than a museum, it’s an incredibly and professionally designed multi-media experience.  It’s truly gut wrenching.  I didn’t realize it until we got to the last space called “The Reflection Room” with a whole wall of names and faces of people who influenced the movement over the years.  As I sat there trying to absorb the previous two hours I was overwhelmed and sobbed uncontrollably for about 10 minutes.  The staff was nice enough to bring me Kleenex.  I’m sure I wasn’t the first.  When I ask myself the “why” of all this and our trip, answers come from different places.  

I truly believe this.  Just as we need to embrace ourselves and those of our friends including our flaws and failures in order to really love each other, we need know and embrace the whole of our history to really know and love this country.  The pain lives in all of us whether we acknowledge it or not and we can’t get beyond it without going through it.  

There are two sites … the Legacy Museum where you cannot take pictures (thankfully) and the memorial where you can discretely do that.  The memorial contains a hanging stone for every county in the US with a documented lynching and they contain the names (some unknown) of all the victims of lynching … some 4,400.  The stones are at ground level and are slowly raised above head height as you walk though.  They symbolism is not lost as you look up at them toward the end.  Here is one county of Mississippi, the state with the most lynchings by some margin.  These stones will be etched in my memory.  Well done EJI … 

Laura and I also had the chance to poach off a school tour of the Rosa Parks Museum and hear the lecture from their tour guide.  It’s really well done there too.  Finally, we went to the More Up Sculpture Park on the site where in 1845, Dr. Marion Sims, known as the “father of modern gynecological surgery, developed the techniques to close vesicles-vaginal fistulas, a problem in the slave breeding business.  I suspect the common history of his remarkable achievements doesn’t mention the enslaved women on whom he experimented (without anesthesia) to perfect his technique.  The sculptures my Michell Browder work to rectify that oversight.  This is another example of telling the whole history. 

Day 4 (3/29/23): Montgomery —> Birmingham

Laura’s Post. 

This was the long-anticipated day of the Legacy Museum tour, also called the “Lynching Museum” in Montgomery, Alabama. A lot of grief today. The museum and the Legacy Memorial is hands down one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had in any museum or monument. It left us gutted and tearful, both of which seem like an appropriate response the the extensive history of trauma it represents. No amount of reading and learning can prepare you for that. (And that’s me viewing it through a White person’s eyes). I think this is an essential experience. Perhaps we should clear the slate and have us all re-apply for citizenship, with visiting this memorial as a prerequisite. 

I’m still reeling. I still cannot fathom … how can it be that I learned about international atrocities many years ago: the Holocaust at age 8, Hiroshima at age 10, the Killing Fields and Bosnia in my teens, an yet we as a national are so incapable of spending any collective energy to systematically teach the two genocides upon which our country was founded: the decimation of native cultures and the theft and enslavement of Black Africans and subsequent terrorization of Black Americans. How is it that I only learned about the Tulsa Massacre in 2020. And the history of lynchings really encompasses it all. 

“Lynchings in America were not isolated hate crimes committed by rouge vigilantes. Lynchings were targeted racial violence perpetrated to uphold an unjust social order. Lynchings were terrorism.

This era left thousands dead; significantly marginalized black people politically, financially and socially and inflicted deep trauma on the entire African American community. White people who witnessed, participated in, and socialized their children in a culture that tolerated gruesome lynchings also were psychologically damaged. State officials’ tolerance of lynchings created enduring national and institutional wounds that have not yet healed. Lynchings occurred in communities where African Americans today remain marginalized, disproportionately poor, overrepresented in prisons and jails, and underrepresented in decision-making roles in the criminal justice system.” - Legacy Memorial 

I will not say any more on this museum and memorial because you will have to go and see it for yourself. Thank you Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative for this gift.  

One final thought. I am so grateful that this memorial honors the full brutal “legacy” of slavery through mass incarceration. I do not know exactly why incarceration struck a personal cord with me at the end of my medical training, but it has now increasingly become the focus of my practice of medicine. I believe watching people close to me being mistreated by this system during my impressionable years left its mark. But the more I get into this work, the more I believe it goes deeper than that. Mass incarceration is a modern evolution of slavery and segregation. And it is one of the most, if not the most, critical Civil Rights issue of our time. And hopefully this is changing, but it still seems like it is talked about as a fringe issue, as if it’s not a predictable outcome of our education and financial, policing, legislative and political agendas. One (HUGE) example is how Nixon’s “War on Drug”, which has shaped our modern criminal justice policy and lead to skyrocketing rates of incarceration of people of color, was a calculated assault on Black communities. In a 1994 interview, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic chief of staff, admitted that this policy was designed to target black communities: 

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing them both heavily, we could disrupt these communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (Citation). 

The last recorded “lynching” in the United States was of 19-year-old Michael Donald of Mobile, Alabama on March 21, 1981. And yet if lynching is defined as “to kill someone for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial,” can we really say it has stopped?

A lot of essential learning here: 

DOCUMENTARIES: 

“Thirteenth” - A must. 

BOOKS:

Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” - really the Bible of modern incarceration reform 

Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy” - founder of EJI, fierce advocate for death row inmates, reformer of criminal justice.

Day 3 (3/28/23): Selma back to Montgomery

LOCATION: Selma —> back to Montgomery (by car). Peter’s Post. 

We spent the good part of a day in Selma listening to Ms. Jo Ann Bland who has been an activist for equal justice since she was a kid.  We managed to get ourselves invited to join two different tour groups from around the country who had booked time with her and felt welcomed by all.  Her story telling was worth the trip all by itself and I realize that one can read all the books and see the pictures but there is nothing like hearing people’s personal stories up close and personal and being in the places where the events went down.  Ms. Bland was inspired by her grandmother who helped raise her after her mother died for lack of a blood transfusion while hospitalized because “black” blood had to be brought from Birmingham (an hour and a half away) and was too late to save her.  Her grandmother had moved to the North and had experience with non-segregation and held out a vision of freedom for her grandchildren.  Ms. Bland was 11 when she and her siblings joined the march to Montgomery, including Bloody Sunday where her 14 year-old sister was clubbed unconscious and needed 35 stitches to close the wounds in her head.  Her sister still completed the entire march to Montgomery.    

Lots to say about Ms. Bland but mostly struck by her commitment, her persistence, her love and humanity in the face of incredible odds.  Her presence in the room is palpable.  When young people show up and ask questions, she cuts them no slack and doesn’t suffer fools … but she calls people to attention and action with love.  Check out her website and maybe think about booking your own tour to Montgomery and Selma or donating to the incredible work she’s doing in the community. 

A little bit about Selma.  We were told it was a very wealthy commercial center up until the turn of the 20th century and beyond.  We were told that people used to come from Birmingham to shop.  If you know the scene now, you’d find that preposterous.  Selma now is struggling economically and the beautiful old but run down buildings cry out for renovation and revitalization.  In fact, there is quite a bit of that going on and a lot more to go.  This picture taken from the Edmund Pettus Bridge shows the river side of the Selma Times Journal Building (far right with red brick foundation) that was recently purchased by friends of Common Power to be fixed up and serve as a local presence for that organization.  Jo Ann Bland will also have an office in that building.  

Here is a recent article from the Selma Times Journal describing the transaction.  Yay for Selma, Common Power, and Jo Ann Bland! 

https://www.selmatimesjournal.com/2022/04/20/historic-stj-buildings-sold/

One of the points Ms. Bland made was that each and every one of us is part of the puzzle to get to a place where equality is a reality.  She drove this point home to all the young people to say that no one is exempt from this assignment.  “You are the most important piece” of the puzzle she would say and I think we all got it.  She didn’t tell people what to do, she just said you need to figure it out.  “If I knew all that needed to be done, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. So you go figure it out,” she said.  Here is a picture from a mural about her.  

This is the full mural at a site that housed a playground with all kinds of climbing equipment and swings for kids when she was a kid.  It’s now a concrete slab with some basketball hoops.  Her goal is to raise money to recreate a community center and park and playground for the neighborhood, to bring people to gather and take back the narrative of their story.

The 11 x 13 = Jail represents the 13 times she was jailed by the time she was 11.  She describes being locked up with 30-40 other people (“and I wasn’t the youngest”) in a cell meant for 2 people with a toilet and one metal bunk and no mattress.  She is living testament to people who were so tired of being ignored, abused, and humiliated that they would suffer anything to change things.  She would say things have changed a lot but we’re not done … we’re not done.   

Another story of revitalization is the St. James Hotel a block down Water St from the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  They have their work cut out for them, keeping up and old building and finding staff to provide services for guests but they’re open and on it.   We were able to get dinner there after our bike ride from Montgomery… thank goodness… we were not in the condition to go looking for sustenance and it would have been hard to find.   

In closing… Laura and I were really inspired by Ms Bland and grateful for all she has done.  It’s been amazing.   Also, I would be remiss to not mention that Selma, in addition to fighting urban blight and decay, got hammered by a tornado in January that leveled sections of the city.  People lost everything, including a lot of renters who had no insurance to help replace their belongings even if the landlords had insurance on the buildings.  We didn’t see the worst sections of town but you don’t have to drive very far from the river to see blocks completely torn up.  They had a housing crisis before the tornado it and it’s that much worse now.   

Day 2 (3/27/23): Montgomery to Selma

 

Departed: Montgomery, AL —> Selma, AL. Biked: 50.4 miles (Laura’s Post)

We had an ambitious itinerary for our first full day together. Given I’d arrived late the night before, we woke up early, as our family DNA dictates that we do. Coffee, talk, coffee, breakfast, pack the bikes!

I didn’t really appreciate when we selected Montgomery as our starting place that the intersection of so many historical moments collided within this city. I grew up knowing about the Montgomery bus boycott, that is for the small paragraph our history books dedicated to it. But we were lucky enough to start off our first day of action with a personal tour by the self-described “foot soldier of the civil rights movement.” Jake Williams, (owner of Montgomery Tours, LLC), led us on a 3-hour history tour of the city. He grew up picking cotton for 2 cents a pound outside of Montgomery. When he was 12 years old in 1965, he matched on Day 4 of the historic Selma to Montgomery march, into Montgomery city limits. 

We learned so much about this city from Jake, but I’ll just share one vignette. The fountain pictured above is on the site of an 1800’s natural Spring. In the 1800’s Montgomery was becoming a hub for the sale of enslaved people as they were being sent from Louisiana to the Eastern Seaboard or vice versa, (I’m trying to stop using the term “slaves” and instead using “enslaved people” because I think it has different connotations). This one intersection held one of the largest local markets for the sale of enslaved people in the area at the time. In 1861, this fountain was just around the corner from the self-declared capitol of the new Confederate States of America, and a telegram was sent from the cream colored building in the right side of the picture frame, giving an ultimate for the surrender of Fort Sumpter, which essentially tipped off the Civil War. In 1955, it was on this corner (left corner of the picture above, near the clock), facing the fountain that Rosa Parks stood waiting to board a bus that would lead to her arrest for refusing to give up her seat, and tip off what we consider to be the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement, during which boycott campaign Dr. MLK Jr. Was anointed the leader of the movement. Several years later, in March 1965, King and his fellow leaders of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the SCLC (Souther Christian Leadership Conference) led a march of 25,000 people past this fountain, up to the steps of the capitol to deliver a famous speech that was viewed to be a turning point of the Civil Rights Movement, when the momentum of White consciousness finally tipped and legislation began to be passed protecting things like voting rights (which many have been working hard to dismantle ever since) … “When will we be free? How long will it take? Not long! Because no lie can live forever!”

With our heads full, we headed out on the bike. First time loading up, riding out of town after the thunderstorms had given way to a veritable sweat bath (drama from this fragile Northwest flower). The first 10 miles of urban sprawl gave way to unbelievable rolling green pastures, rivers, cows and very few homes. It was an ambitious 50 mile first day for us - relatively untrained legs, loaded bikes, heat and very few services. But it was hard not to try to look at this landscape as I struggled along the route of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march (more on that tomorrow!), and imagine what it might have felt like to walk that, with only a bedroll and leering, threatening anti-segregationists all around. A lot to think about pedaling along with just your thoughts; maybe one of the things I love best about touring. It’s good to be back. 

One theme that struck me from my first day of our adventure was the overflowing pride of these communities, black and white alike. Our tour guide Jake called out early in his tour that “Northerners” often come down here with a load of preconceptions about the South and it’s “backwards” ways. But he showcased the amazing industry and community growth, downtown revitalization of the Montgomery, and gently reminded me that the most violent school integration in the country was actually in Boston, MA. And that racism, segregation and gentrification are as much alive and well in “liberal” Northern and Western cities such as Chicago, Detroit and LA, (and, ahem, Seattle), as they are in Southern cities. It was amazing to see his his home and it’s history through this eyes. Similarly, my cabdriver coming into town pointed out things as we drove in. A pickup truck driver stopped us at a rural gas station en route to Selma to encourage us to take a back road to see some historic properties. Our server at a Selma restaurant told us of the local authors, the current preachers of Brown’s Chapel. People are inherently proud of their home, and they should be. I think sometimes we in the liberal pockets of the Northwest are just as prone to judgement as those on the other side of the political spectrum, or from a far off corner of the country. I admit I was nervous to come to Alabama. Because what has my echo chamber taught me about Alabama: enslavement, Jim Crow, GOP gerrymandering, restricted reproductive rights. It’s good for me to stretch some of those narrow snapshots, (which are of course a real part of history and present day), to see as much as I can of this place eyes wide open. After all, if I’ve digested the lessons of nonviolence that was preached by Civil Rights leaders, the point of nonviolence is to behold your “enemy” as a person, in the hopes that they may learn to see your own humanity. It’s a lesson my generation has not been taking notes on. 

We arrived in Selma, tired but damn proud of ourselves. Coming into town over the bridge the sun was setting and a group of young people were marching to a spirited song over the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

SONG of the day: When Will We Be Paid (The Staple Singers)

MOVIE: Selma (*a bit of historical blurring, but captures they key people and moments of an amazing story)

Day 1 (3/26/23): Peter Arrives in Montgomery

 LOCATION: Montgomery, AL (Peter’s Post)

I arrived on March 25 in Montgomery right on schedule at 3:15 and checked into the hotel and went adventuring to see if I could locate Capitol City Bikes to pick up the bikes, about 1/2 mile away.  What struck me on a Saturday afternoon was how empty the city seemed.  There were no cars on the streets and very few people about.  Montgomery, like every other city its size seems to have been hollowed out by the flight to the suburbs of the residents and then the building of malls, big box stores, etc. that emptied the city of everything except government offices.  Since Montgomery is the state Capitol of Alabama, the government presence is substantial.  

However, as one looks closely and as evening arrived and festivities began (3 big weddings, a baseball group called Savannah Banana (the Harlem globe trotters of baseball, I’m told) was in town, it all came alive.  That’s when I realized how much redevelopment has gone on in downtown Montgomery.  The bars & restaurants filled up, music was in the air, and it got lively.  It’s an amazingly beautiful downtown and waterfront on the Alabama River so it’s good to see a lot of the old buildings renovated and repurposed.  Also, just in the walking around, one couldn’t miss the fact that there are museums, plaques, statues, etc. everywhere that memorialize the civil rights movement. 

I met Jeff the next morning at his bike shop and had a wonderful interchange.  Jeff’s shop, Capitol City Bicycle Repair & Service is co-located with a public house (coffee shop in the a.m. and bar etc. in the evening and gathering place all day long).  It’s located in a small commercial strip at 5 points, right on the Selma-Montgomery march route and is in the redevelopment phase.  Jeff is a former Washingtonian and knows the bike scene in Seattle that I got to know in 1977 when I moved there.  We had lots to catch up on and he filled me in a lot about his history and about Montgomery from a local’s perspective.  Jeff has become my new BFF and our guardian angel for all things bike related in Montgomery.   Probably more to say about Jeff and his mission later.   Bottom line about Montgomery is that I’d like to spend more time there….it’s dripping with history and many people have a personal connection to it and backstories to many of the events that went down here 60-70 years ago.   

Peter’s Intro

 

You might be wondering why, of all the things to do in the world, that Laura and I are riding our bikes through rural Alabama, Mississippi, & Tennessee. It’s a long story but I’ll just say that Laura and I have shared adventures over the years and biking has been a special thing for us to share. There is something very special about bicycle touring. The pace is slower, you experience the landscape, hills, weather, and people very differently when you’re just out there on the road with your little bicycle.

One is more vulnerable, there are conditions to deal with and problems to solve. I think it makes one more open to and aware of what is around. I could try to write a lot about that but it would fall short somehow. When I took a 3 month leave from my job in 2001 and did a solo, unsupported bike trip across the country in 2001, it probably freaked my teen-aged kids out a bit but also gave them permission to think outside the box about life and they did adventures of their own. It was my On Beyond Zebra moment as a parent. It also bought me the energy and inspiration for another 10 years my career. This is a tamer version of other bike rides but still addresses the adventure aspect.

We also have been interested in the civil rights movement and read lots of the same books over the years and shared thoughts about what we learned. So….put the two things together and you a have a historic civil rights bike trip through important sites from the era. The story of the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s that eventually ended formal/legal segregation and dramatically increased access to the ballot is so incredible, I feel it should be integral to every high school student’s understanding of American History. For us to be able to actually visit some of the holy sites where these events went down feels very precious to me. To be able to share it with Laura is a chance of a lifetime.

I’m so grateful to Laura for carving out the time and for pushing me to do this. I’m also really grateful to Joe (Laura’s husband), Raleigh and Judy (Joe’s mom) for supporting our trip with their time tending to Emma (8) and Birdie (5) while their mom is away.

Before the Trip

 Why am I doing this trip? 

 

This was a trip conceived by my Dad many years ago over our shared love of history and the daunting first book of the epic Civil Rights anthology that sat on his shelf for years titled “Parting the Waters.” You see my Dad was in my early childhood the primary parent in my life. He stepped back from his career for a spell, running a consulting business from the basement to be more around when we were young. He taught me many things in those years, but always inspired me with his love of history and especially in the realm of the quest for justice and racial equality in the Civil Rights era. We listened to the MLK speeches on the first online encyclopedia that came with our ancient Mac computer. During my second-grade year, he volunteered to help lead a self-created Underground Railroad history tour with another parent of different places in Seattle. I followed his lead and became a history major in college as he had done. The years passed and that anthology sitting on his shelf became a challenge between us: who would finish it first? 

 

But it wasn’t just an interest in history that we shared. He also introduced me to the freedom and joy that comes from moving your body in the world. He coached my soccer teams in elementary school. In high school, we ran and hiked and later cycled. We ended many Summer days during my college years joining him and his friends for a ride down around Seward Park in Seattle, training for local long-distance rides. And as I followed his lead in other areas, when he rode his bike solo from Seattle to Boston in 2001, the seed was planted for me. Before starting medical school in 2008, I rode my bike from Seattle to San Francisco. I learned important lessons from physical exertion: I learned I was strong and that I could push through pain and discomfort. During my own solo adventures, I learned that I could rely on myself to navigate unexpected obstacles. 

 

Sometime in 2015 or 2016 we began to think about how amazing it would be do the trip we had always talked about in that far-flung fantastical way: what if we did a self-guided tour of the South, visiting some of the landmarks of the Civil Rights. For several years we read and dreamed and casually researched, and then took the plunge to pick a date. But it wasn’t our time yet. Our trip, set to depart in March 2020, never happened. 

 

And then many other things happened, to the world, to us personally. In 2020, the US was devastated by the double traumas of a COVID pandemic and then in May 2020, the death of George Floyd, and a more collective white awakening to the realities of persistent racism and racial inequity in our country, or at least in pockets of the Northwest. And I was learning too. Though I had reveled in the perceived completed wins of the Civil Rights era, I think like many white people I was under the misconception that this was a battle for equality that history had wrapped up. We had conquered this. I had many things to learn, and things to unlearn. 

 

While there are many times in the past 3 years that this trip seemed to be slipping from our grasp, here we are poised to try again in March 2023. And for me, I believe this has happened for a reason. Or perhaps what I mean is, I believe this trip will mean more to me in 2023 than it did in 2020. I am beginning to view history, and consequently the present, through a different lens. I am also 39 years old, the same age as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were when they were brutally assassinated. Medgar Evers was 37. To think of what these 3 men had accomplished and scarified by my age still floors me. I want to pay homage to their life’s work, and the work of many other incredible leaders that my high school history books never informed me of, but whom I now know were all legends of this movement. Names like Ella Baker, Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Shuttlesworth, Diane Nash, James Bevel, Ralph Abernathy, Medgar Evers and many more. I will never know what it is like to be a black person in the 60’s let alone a black person in this country in 2023, but I want to go and see for myself a part of the country that is foreign to me. I want to deepen my understanding and challenge my own misconceptions. And I want to experience it up close and personal, as only walking and biking through a place can make you appreciate. 

 

This writing is intended for you, the people on this list who are known to my Dad and I. It is not intended for mass distribution. I’m hoping to share with you both what we see as well as snippets of this history through readings and podcasts, for those that are interested. I’m a white person talking about history, and thus I’m bound to trip and stumble in doing so. I welcome you to share your own learnings with me. If you see that I’ve misspoken, I welcome you to correct me. 

 

And in case you’re wondering, I finished “Parting the Waters” first. For the record. 

Introductions are in order

And so it begins...

Laura Adler, age 39, daughter, and Peter Morgan, age 71, father set off for the cycling trip of a lifetime. A trip that will honor and deepen their family history while taking an immersive journey through the complex, tragic, yet inspiring history of the U.S.  civil rights movement. Here they will catalog their experiences and share their physical and emotional ride with those they love. 

We hope that this will be a repository for epiphanies, echoes, and nostalgia as we embark on this journey. 

Laura's words can be found here

Peter's words here.

And the motivational story behind our trip here.

....or was it here?

Here's to embracing the fullest range of human experience during our lives!