Montgomery

Montgomery was the endpoint of the march from Selma. Martin Luther King gave a famous speech from the steps of the Capitol, at the same spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy (a plaque marks the spot of the latter, but not the former). In the same vein, the highway from Selma to Montgomery, the route for the marchers, is also designated the "Jefferson Davis Highway." A Confederate flag flies on the grounds of the capitol, next to a grandiose Confederate war memorial. We were in Montgomery on a Sunday, and everything was closed, so we couldn't visit the Rosa Parks museum there. We did, however, go for a pleasant jog and ran up the steps of the capitol ten times.


Just down the street from the Capitol is the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. This was Martin Luther King's pulpit in the mid-1950's, where he first rose to prominence during the Montgomery bus boycott.

Richard's Cafe, Selma

In Selma, we went to Richard's Cafe, on Annie Pearl Avery's recommendation. Richard's was in a little rundown building with a nonexistent grass area to the side. On the inside, it was furnished with red carpet, bandstand, and booths on the wall. I wouldn't give Richard's Cafe a 10 in atmosphere, but what it lacked in looks, it made up for in food. We ordered fried chicken and a fried catfish sandwich. In short, they were heavenly. The catfish had the perfect consistency and color, golden brown due to the masterwork of breading. It tasted like it looked, a bit spicy, but very salty. when you took a bite of it, the fish fell apart in your mouth. The chicken was good, but it didn't blow us away. The sides that we got were some collard greens, 'slaw, and sweet yams. The greens were cooked with in an inch of death, but they had retained their flavor of savory and tangy. The 'slaw was the best we had had yet and the yams were so sweet that they could have been a dessert. They even looked like a dessert! Overall Richard's was a great experience and I learned that I love soul food!!
My Rating: 9.3/10

Saw's Barbecue, Birmingham

At Saw's Barbecue we got some of the best barbecue that we've had on this trip. We ordered a pulled pork sandwich and some ribs. The sandwich was the greatest sandwich that we had had yet, and the ribs were the meatiest, most delectable thing ever. They contained, together, twice as much meat as the previous ribs we had devoured. When we had finished, the manager let us go back with him to the barbecue pit. He even let me throw a log into the fire!

My rating: 9.7/10

Selma, Annie Pearl Avery

[Jacob] In Selma, we ran into Annie Pearl Avery, a veteran of the civil rights movement. She told us about her experiences. Annie Pearl had participated in most of the southern civil rights demonstrations, such as the March on Washington, Bloody Sunday, and The Freedom Riders. She worked for SNCC and had been thrown in jail too many times to for her to remember. She told us that she had awoken on September 15, 1963 to the sound of the bomb exploding at the 16th street baptist church in Birmingham, AL.


[Richard]We had an incredible experience meeting Annie Pearl Avery. When we went to visit the Voting Rights Museum, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus bridge, we found the doors locked and an older Black woman waiting in the parking lot. This was Ms. Avery, and so instead of visiting the museum, we were privileged to listen to her amazing story of active participation in the civil rights movement from the Freedom Rides on through to the present day. Ms. Avery ran the voter registration drive for SNCC in Hale County. She was present at just about every major event of the movement in the mid-sixties, including Albany, Birmingham, Selma (where she was arrested on Bloody Sunday), and even the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, where Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party attempted to seat an alternative delegate slate to the official all white Democratic Party list. Ms. Avery sat in jail with noted veterans of the movement such as Diane Nash, and she spent extended time in solitary confinement in Mississippi. Now she lives in Selma and volunteers her time at the museum there. We were lucky to meet her and hear her story.

In Selma we also visited the Brown Chapel AME Church, focal point for the movement and site of many mass meetings and speeches by Dr. King, as well as the Dallas County Courthouse, where Blacks were denied the right to register to vote by Sheriff Jim Clark.

Birmingham Children's Crusade

After the BCRI, we went on a walk around the city following little historic signposts. These signposts featured information on the area they were placed in and how it connected to the civil rights era. We walked through Kelly Ingram Park, where the children's march had been met by a mob of firemen, donning firehouses propelling high pressurized water, and policemen, unleashing attack dogs. The children had been marching from the 16th Street Baptist Church to nearby department stores. The attack on the children had been ordered by the current police Commissioner, Eugene 'Bull' Connor. Conner drove around in a white tank, terrorizing black in Birmingham, Stopping their marches, and in general making life as a black person miserable. Looking back on this event in history in hindsight, I probably wouldn't have marched, but I betcha that if i were a kid in Birmingham at that time, I would've marched due to peer pressure. If i had been there then I would've, against my parents' will marched for my freedom as a human being.

Birmingham

A very pleasant city, Birmingham! Again, tough to square with the bloody history we've been learning about. We visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church, were four young girls were notoriously murdered in the 1963 bombing. Also across the street from the museum is Kelly Ingram Park, where police chief Bull Connor's men attacked peaceful marchers and children with riot dogs and fire hoses. The museum even contained Connor's infamous command vehicle, a white armored personal carrier. The park was sunny and gorgeous, and we took a guided walking tour which traced the route of the Children's Crusade March.

Elvis's Birthplace, Tupelo, Mississippi

Ole Miss, Oxford, Mississippi

We stopped for lunch at the University of Mississippi, scene of the epic 1962 civil rights confrontation when James Meredith became the first black to enroll at Ole Miss. Typical of our trip, the beautiful, peaceful scene we encountered was completely at odds with the violent and scary upheaval we've seen in photos and video. The Lyceum, where these photos were taken, was the scene of a bloody all-night riot between white students and federal marshalls ordered there by JFK.

Dinner at Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous

Dinner at Charlie Vergos' Rendevous was a little better than terrible. We ordered a rack of dry- cooked ribs, and they were not up to standard. The meat was tough and stuck to the bone like it had been fixed there with glue. On top of that, there wasn't much meat on the bones in the first place. The meat that was there had little flavor and was dry like a desert. Then it had seemed that chef, to make up for the lack of flavor in the meat, had over-seasoned the ribs with the disgusting 'Charlie Vergos' special recipe seasoning'. the 'slaw and baked beans had tons of the spice in them too. They were also kind of gross. Overall, I think Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous is not the best barbecue in the south, but it is still better than most barbecue in Seattle.

My rating: 5/10

Lunch at the Bar-B-Que Shop, Memphis

On March 7, my Dad and I went to the Bar-B-Que Shop in downtown Memphis for lunch. We split a full order of slow-cooked ribs and a pulled pork sandwich. The ribs were the most fantastic ribs either of us had ever tasted. Half of them were dry and the other half had been smothered in just the right amount of sweet n’ smoky BBQ sauce. Meat just fell off the saturated bones and melted in your mouth. The pulled pork sandwich was good, but it didn’t blow us way like the ribs did. The meat was a bit dry and the roll was standard. I also think that it was under sauced. Both of these meals came with sides of ‘slaw and baked beans. These were both fairly above average. The ‘slaw was crunchy and chock full of carrots. I thought it complemented the meat nicely. The baked beans hand a smoky flavor and just fell apart in your mouth. We washed all this down with a couple glasses of sweet tea. Overall, I loved the Bar-B-Que Shop and wouldn’t think twice about eating there again.

My rating: 9.5/10

Lorraine Motel, Memphis

We started our trip at the city which traditionally marks the end of the civil rights movement, Memphis, Tennessee. This is where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel. The Motel has since been transformed into the National Civil Rights Museum.


The museum was incredible, combining timelines, photos, and other typical exhibits with vivid, first-hand experiences, like climbing aboard a 50's vintage Montgomery city bus and being startled as a loud voice ordered you to "move to the back." The exhibit commemorating the Freedom Rides had a burned-out Greyhound bus, and there was a realistic recreation of the Birmingham jail cell where Dr. King wrote his famous letter. But the climax of the museum was room 306 of the motel, where Dr. King spent his final minutes before exiting to the balcony, here he was shot and killed by James Earl Ray.


Across the street was an annex to the museum which examined in detail the assassination and subsequent investigation. The exhibits were located in the boarding house where James Earl Ray stayed, and you could peer out from the small bathroom window (at center), from which he fired the fatal shot.