This day was the most moving in so many ways. We began our day at Brown AME
Chapel, the seat of the Movement. Joyce Parish O'Neill told us about the history of AME churches and then moved into her experience as a young girl and the historic role this church played in the Movement. Having seen the central role of Marion, AL yesterday, we heard more about the students meeting. We heard how the children were arrested, taken to jails near and far. We heard before about the black eyed peas and cornbread that they ate, sometimes long after being jailed. One person told us there were rat droppings in the food. Mrs. O'Neill's sister came home and cried for two weeks. We heard that the furniture, pews, pulpit, stained glass and all the furnishings were the same; they were so beautiful. Though their membership has declined, they keep the church in such beautiful condition. Some of us stood in the pulpit where Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Malcolm X and so many SNCC leaders spoke. Many of us took photos in the pulpit. I do not idolize these people but I have to say that this is sacred ground. There is something to being in a place where a spiritual justice movement like this took place. I felt it in Delhi, India where Mahatma Gandhi walked and spent his last days. Walking down the steps that he trod right before he was murdered, there is a palpable energy, a great light, a source of spiritual sustenance that I felt today--everywhere!
From Brown AME church, we walked across Edmund Pettus Bridge, silently and in pairs. As we crested the bridge, we visualized a sea of blue in deputies and posse that the marchers could not see till they crossed over. We too crossed over. It is hard to describe the beauty of the Alabama River. You can see it in some of the photos I will post but it is a sight of exquisite beauty. Here on the bridge and in the memorial on the other side, beauty, ugliness, determination and faith met. The memorial on the other side is an expression of the leaders and the people that did not under even the most brutal of circumstances let "anyone turn them around."
We continued on to the Lowndes County Interpretative Center which is filled with astounding pieces, artifacts and depth. A lot of
information centered around the Tent Cities that sprang up. After many Blacks registered to vote, many of the poorest people found themselves thrown off the land if they were sharecroppers. They lived in Tents where everyone in the family perhaps had one drawer that they shared. More stories were told. Highway 80 is filled with Tents where people lived when they lost their homes because they dared register to vote once the Voting Rights Act passed.
We traveled on the route and stopped at the Memorial for Viola Liuzzo, a Unitarian mother from the north who was moved to join the Movement when she saw the news and the beatings and tear gas of Bloody Sunday. Viola was a nurse and helped there but stayed on to continue to provide transportation on the long road to some of the marchers. She was shot and killed and the young man with her only escaped her fate because he pretended to be dead when the Ku Klux Klan checked to make sure she was dead. Her memorial is modest, enclosed in an iron gate to protect it. Like Jimmie Lee Jackson, Jonathan Daniels and James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo is listed on a plaque at Brown AME Chapel as martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement.
We visited Rosa Parks Museum which has a depiction of her historic bus ride. We had a guide and had time afterwards. I am realizing more about all of the many famous people and even more of the ordinary souls who sustained the movement.
Next we visited Dexter Baptist Church where Martin Luther King pastored in Montgomery and perhaps, the most incredible experience (though this is impossible to say) was with our guide, Shirley Cherry, at Martin Luther King's parsonage. Here, King received numerous threats everyday. Someone called and told him
that they would bomb his house in three days if he didn't leave town. He tells how he was so afraid. He wanted to leave. He thought he was doing the right thing, that theirs was a righteous movement but he was losing courage. Praying at the kitchen table, he had an epiphany that he must continue and that God would never leave him until the ends of the earth. He would never be alone and that strengthened him completely and his tumultuous fear. Many of us sat at that kitchen table and felt the energy and faith of this man. It was indeed hallowed sacred ground. Once again, it's difficult to describe how it feels to sit at the table where Martin Luther King sat and feel his presence still alive in that room where he was fortified by his God and his faith renewed.
Such a day! It is the stories of courage of women like Joyce Parish O'Neill, Shirley Cherry, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, three Unitarian Universalist ministers with us on this trip--Gordon Gibson, James Hobart and Clark Olsen--all of these people and so many others we have met or heard about that paved the way for people to finally get the right to vote and to continue the struggle today.
Tomorrow we go to Meridian Mississippi and begin the Mississippi stories.
Be well,
Susan
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