Day 8 (4/2/23): Kosciusko to French Camp

 Peter’s Post. Biked: 21 miles 

The sweet spot in daily biking distance is 40-50 miles given our current conditioning and loaded bikes. We can knock that off in 5-6 hours including stops and that keeps it fun. However, when riding on “the Trace” as they call it, lodging is not evenly spaced and we’ve had to plan accordingly. The 63 miles Jackson to Kosciusko yesterday was a little more than we wished in miles and it would have been another 73 to Houston today so we opted to split it into a 21 mile day today and a 52 mile ride tomorrow. We were both pretty whipped yesterday so it was a bit of a relief to get a late start, big breakfast and have a short day today. This is not a race or an endurance contest. It was enough to get the legs turning but not enough to get really tired. The riding on the Trace is so lovely with very little traffic and great scenery.    

We’re staying in a little B&B cottage called the Southern Grace Cottage which is lovely and fits the bill.  

There is a lot of civil rights history is not in the immediate vicinity but it’s all around. Bryant’s Grocery (Where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955) is 60 miles to the east and Philadelphia (where Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were killed in 1964, is 40 to the West. Laura, our ace researcher found this map showing some of the most famous (notorious) sites of the civil rights movement if you are not that familiar with the geography of the state.  Laura and I keep bringing up these tragic events and heroic struggles from the past to remind ourselves why it’s important not to forget them. As Medgar Evers said: “Freedom has never been free.” Perhaps it’s particularly important at this time in our history to not be complacent. 

Mississippi Civil Rights Trail 

The history that is in the immediate area is the history of the 5 “Civilized Tribes” Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole and particularly the Choctaw who lived here. They were called “civilized” because they had agreed to adopt western ways, became Christian, literate, farmed and some even owned slaves. Of course, this was not enough to protect them or their land. The bargain at the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (see monument) in 1830 involved the Choctaw trading their land in Mississippi for new land out west (Oklahoma) in return for a right of sovereignty as a tribe. Like a lot of treaties between the Native Americans and the U.S. Government, things didn’t turn out as advertised. The removal of the Native Americans paved the way for the introduction of many more African slaves to work the land. The rapid expansion of slavery came late in Mississippi relative to southern states to the east because it required the removal of tribes from the land on the trail of tears. My pithy descriptions of events belie the suffering inherent in all these events (the brutal evacuation of the Native Americans and cruel importation of enslaved Africans) that has been borne by generations of descendants of those affected. A stone monument blithely honors an act of genocide.   

Thanks for your encouragement and for traveling with us. 

Day 7 (4/1/23): Jackson to Kosciusko

 Laura’s Post. Biked 65 miles.

This is is an Ode to Mississippi. You have made us feel so welcome! This Southern Hospitality permeates this place. From an impromptu introduction to Hezekiah Watkins in the Jackson Civil Rights Museum, to local BBQ secrets like Bully’s. We’d heard about Bully’s through a little word of mouth, but apparently it is a famous local spot. It’s unassuming, far down a street surrounded by abandoned industry and overgrown weeds. Hard to even see the front sign well. Inside are old paintings of Malcom X, Dr. King and Medgar Evers intermixed with family photos. We walk through the doors and we are swept up in this awesome family business, where we are pampered and fawned over while being served up a heaping plate of fried chicken, fried ocra and collard greens. And I look up on the wall and I see “James Beard Award 2016.” (One of the most prestigious food awards in the US). I’ll be damned. The love of this place is evident even in those Civil Rights leaders who suffered so greatly at the hands of its unjust laws. It seems like Medgar Evers knew the end was coming in 1963 due to growing threats, but he refused to leave. He loved Mississippi, and he was determined to leave it a better place for his children. He stated, “I may be going to Heaven or Hell, but I’ll be going from Jackson.” 

Today we ditch the car and we are back on the road. Four days along the Natchez-Trace Parkway, weaving through land that was originally Choctaw, Chickasaws and Creek territory, before settlers wrested it away following the Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830. Now this is a preserved parkway that goes through Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. Almost not a car and certainly no services for 65 miles of unbelievable beauty, with winds and critters making noises around us under bluebird skies. We were BEAT by the time we finished. 7 hours is in the sun and humidity without real places to replenish us was a thing. And the swamps didn’t look like an ideal place to try out my new water filtration system. (Lots of SNAKES here Joe!). 

 

Since we’re pedaling right near Winona, MS, I’d be remiss not to mention one of my favorite lesser known heroes of the Mississippi Civil Rights movement. Fannie Lou Hamer was born the 20th child of a poor sharecropping family deep in the Mississippi Delta. She did learn to read and write and had an affinity for poetry, though had to drop out of school early to take care of her aging parents. She too married eventually and moved to work another plantation farm as a sharecropper. But literacy helped to awaken her to the budding Civil Rights movement around her, and in 1962 she led a group to register to vote. This got her fired and evicted from her property. Not long after, she tried to integrate a lunch counter at the bus station in Winona, and was beaten nearly to death. But this woman wasn’t stopping. After engaging in the Freedom Summer of 1964, a summer that would be marked as one of the deadliest with regard to murders and bombings in a state that was already the lynching capitol of the country, she took on the political infrastructure. When Black people were denied access to the local Democratic primaries, she and others developed their own caucus (the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party), hosted a mock election which drew 60,000 black votes. She used this power to eventually get herself a seat at the bargaining table. See her testify. And sing!

“If I fall, I’ll fall 5 feet, 4 inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.” - Fannie Lou Hamer

At 6 PM we dragged our weary sweaty bodies into the town of Kosciusko, MS, a town originally founded by a Choctaw woman and her trader husband. We’re staying in an antebellum era B&B that almost has the civil war portraits on the mantel. Our real grand finale of the night was walking into Jason’s Southern Table on a rocking Saturday night. A wedding reception was happening in one room, the bar on the second floor was bumping, and we just got to watch the whole scene play out from the main dining room. Country music blasting, sequin tassels and cowboy boots on full display, large chain crosses adorning all the necks. The owner even came and sat with us for a few minutes. We are sampling from all the flavors of Mississippi now!

Ok, one more amazing Mississippi Civil rights hero who was born right here in Kosciusko, (besides Oprah! Truth!). James Meredith was the first student (Law student) to integrate Ole’ Miss (aka: University of Mississippi in Oxford). Though the courts demanded it happen the Governor of Mississippi himself showed up to try and block the door to prevent him from registering. He persisted. Years later he decided to march from Memphis to Jackson, through the Delta, (and we thought we were adventurous for trying to bike it!), in his “March Against Fear” to protest segregation and promote voting. He was shot in the legs on the second day and hospitalized. Other Civil Rights leaders including Dr. King picked up his march and he was able to complete it with them. 

PODCASTS:

• Mississippi Civil Rights: Champions in the Fight for Voting Rights - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mississippi-champions-in-the-fight-for-voting-rights/id1603645728?i=1000549778680
• Mississippi Civil Rights: All Eyes on Mississippi -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mississippi-all-eyes-on-mississippi/id1603645728?i=1000549777644

Day 6 (3/31/23): Jackson

 Peter’s Post

Laura and I made it to Jackson on Thursday night after a full day in Birmingham which Laura covered.  We both realize by unearthing the painful past and reminding ourselves of the work yet to be done on equity and justice, we’re not giving credit for the progress that has been made.  Laura and I have talked a lot about how congenial people seem, how races mix comfortably, and how some black friends we know who’ve moved to Seattle really miss the south and can’t wait to get back.  More on that perhaps later. 

Meanwhile, our tour guide in Birmingham did keep us focused on how racism doesn’t go away, it goes underground and sprouts in new forms more subtle, insidious, and perhaps more pervasive than before.  Kinda like new strains of bacteria impervious to old treatments.  He rained heavily on any notion that we’ve made real progress on this front. 

Consequently, crossing the border into Mississippi gave me a tingling, apprehensive feeling.  As our Birmingham guide said, something like:  “Alabama likes Mississippi because they make us look good” or “the 50 bombings Birmingham did over 15 years, Mississippi did in one summer.”  In spite of its smaller population, Mississippi was the lynching capital of the country and you can see how that played out by county.  Emmit Till in 1955 and and the Goodman, Schwerner, & Chaney murders in 1964 made the national news but so many more were under the radar except to black people in Mississippi.  

Our first stop today was the Civil Rights Museum in downtown Jackson.  This is another “must see” experience.  Perhaps not on the same plane as the Legacy Museum in Montgomery as a “gut punch” but there is plenty of that too and perhaps more historical and informational content.  It’s incredibly well designed and full of amazing displays.  This is the mural across the street.   I confess, not being from Jackson, I only recognized Megan Evers on the mural and didn’t know the names of the other 3 hero’s of Jackson and had to look them up. 

Eudora Welty, Medgar Evers, Thalia Mara and David Banner.

My first real awareness of the civil rights movement came in June, 1963 when I was 11.  As a kid growing up in rural Hawaii with no TV and close to zero black people or cultural references, I had no context for understanding what was happening when the Medgar Evers’ assassination was highlighted in Life Magazine or Time which were  available in our house.  Laura says she was about the same age when we watched the original movie on Evers that perhaps launched out shared exploration of the civil rights movement.  1963 was a heavy year of things in the national awareness with the anti-segregation movement in Birmingham, the assassination of Evers, March on Washington in August, the 16th St. Baptist Church bombing in September, and the Kennedy Assassination in November.  For people in the movement in Alabama, Mississippi and other places, these were just the headlines of intense struggles going on in many places that need to be recognized.  

In the Civil Rights museum we encountered Hezekiah Watkins, age 75 giving a talk to a group of middle school aged students about his experience getting caught up in the Freedom Ride arrests in Jackson in 1961 where Mississippi distinguished itself for not just arresting the freedom riders but sending them to prison for months, including 13 year old Hezekiah, the

youngest person imprisoned.  He would go on to be arrested over 100 times, sometimes twice in one day.  Like Jo Ann Bland, he said he was just like any kid at the time who thought everything was fine.  If you were black and stayed in your lane (water fountains, restrooms, etc.) and didn’t challenge the order of things, you were fine and life could be congenial.  It’s amazing how we can think any situation is “normal” until we realize it isn’t (e.g. It’s normal that the U.S. spends ~ $ 1 trillion/year on the military and has hundreds of bases around the world, politicians argue that teachers should be armed to protect their students, etc.).  Both of them had elders who pointed out how marginalized they were and opened their eyes to how it could/should be.  Mr. Watkins parting words to his students was: “When you turn 17, go and register to vote so when you’re 18, you can vote.  If you don’t vote, you’re nobody.”  Laura and I had a nice chance to chat with him because, when he’s not traveling, he hangs out in the reflection room of the museum to give talks and inspire people like us.  Like, our guide in Birmingham, Mr. Watkins reminds us that just because of the fact that blacks are in positions of power in places like Jackson or Birmingham doesn’t necessarily mean they’re immune from corruption action or able to be effective.  Witness Herschel Walker being put up by the power structure in Georgia …window dressing.  Mr. Watkins compared racism going underground to fire ants that can live quietly below the surface until they swarm.  Great analogy.  

https://www.visitjackson.com/blog/hezekiah-watkins/

Laura and I drove our bikes to to Vicksburg in the afternoon and cycled around the battlefield park.  For the Civil War buffs among our readers, Vicksburg was a huge strategic victory for the North that happened simultaneously with Gettysburg that gave the North control over the Mississippi River and helped to choke off supply lines to the Confederacy from the West.  Grant’s strategic genius and willingness to take risks launched him into prominence and earned him the respect of Lincoln who promoted him to head the union army.  Although it was a brutal campaign, the siege of Vicksburg starved 38,000 soldiers into surrender vs. being killed outright.  It’s a fabulous bike 16 mile bike ride around the park if you’re ever in the area.  The park has a series of monuments created by individual states to commemorate their own regiments who fought there.  These were “federated states” and “confederated states” who raised armies vs. a fully national military force that we have now.  This struggle between the power & authority of states vs. the federal government lives on.  

Civil War, Civil Rights … history all blends together to form the present.  Maybe we need a new Civil movement … perhaps something that promotes civility in general.  In the words of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It's not even past."

We return our car today and will venture north toward Memphis on the Natchez-Trace National Parkway on our bikes.  This is a very rural part of Mississippi and we’re not sure what will have in terms of cell or internet service where we’re going.  We’re looking forward to the time on the road and a chance to emotionally digest what we’ve seen while just making the pedals go around.  I think of cycling as a contemplative practice and a good way to integrate and make meaning out of what one has taken in and is just percolating in the soul.  If you’re following on the map, we’ll be in Kosciusko, French Camp, Houston, and New Albany before arriving in Memphis on the 5th.  Inshallah.   

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.