Globe hopping
32 / My journey
Bang to rights in
Alabama Andy Facer enjoys a tour of Civil Rights sites in Alabama, a state at the heart of events that sparked the end of racial segregation in the USA
“W
hat happened here changed the World,” says our guide and my colleague Rosemary as we cross the Mississippi border into Alabama. We are three hours into our motorcoach drive from New Orleans to Selma, where we will begin our tour of some of the pivotal moments in the American Civil Rights story.
First stop, Selma Our first stop is the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, a town infamous for the march to Montgomery in 1965. As we sit down in the basement of the church to a lunch of fried chicken, collard greens and black-eyed peas, we are introduced to JoAnne Bland – and when JoAnne speaks you listen! Born and raised in Selma, JoAnne shares her experiences of how racism and segregation created huge divides in the town and across the nation. By the time she was 11 she had been arrested 13 times and was a participant in 'Bloody Sunday', marching with 600 others across Edmund Pettus Bridge – where they were met by tear gas and police beatings. We walk across the bridge, trying to imagine those events in 1965. I look back and notice the recently reopened and refurbished St James Hotel, part of Hilton’s Tapestry collection. This downtown property should be a game changer for Selma. Jake Williams of Montgomery
Tours keeps us entertained on the 54-mile trip to Montgomery – a route he walked nearly half a century earlier. Instead of heading straight for the hotel, we follow the same route the march took in Montgomery, around Court Square Fountain and up Dexter Avenue to the State Capitol Building.
Influential Montgomery Leaving Montgomery’s Embassy Suites Hotel, we are greeted by Michelle Browder, our city guide. A larger-than-life character, she is wearing red glasses and gives us all a pair to mimic her look. Our tour starts on Montgomery’s Riverfront. Home to a paddle steamer, amphitheatre and baseball stadium, this is now a fun area – but it has a dark past. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, slaves from Africa would arrive by boat and, in chains, walk up Commerce Street where they were sold in the auction houses around Court Square Fountain. We arrive at Dexter Avenue, one of the most historically important streets in the USA. To my right is the Winter House, from where the telegram that started the American Civil war was sent; opposite is the bus stop where Rosa Parks boarded her bus; and at the top of the road is the State Capitol building, where Martin Luther King Jr. made his ‘How Long, Not Long’ speech. In the shadow of the State Capitol Building is Dexter Avenue King Baptist Memorial Church, the only Church the Baptist minister and activist ever pastored at. For visitors, compact Montgomery is a
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My Journey Alabama V9.indd 32
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