Montgomery, Alabama

         The drive from Nashville to Montgomery was relatively short compared to some of the other legs of my trip so far. It was a little odd that a 4-hour drive seemed like no trouble at all, but in the same way, it was freeing. At this point in the trip, I had grown accustomed to the road and I felt little trepidation about traveling for several hours in the car. In fact, I looked forward to it.

I arrived in Montgomery in the early evening, settled in my hotel room, and went to a nearby grocery store to buy supplies for dinner. After cooking a simple meal, I worked on research and blog posts for several hours before turning in for the evening. The next morning I woke up, made breakfast, and drove into town.

I found parking directly outside the Capitol building, a convenience that I always appreciate. The sun was shining, and the bright white building was glistening in the daylight. It was an older Capitol – I have found that generally, the Eastern states have older Capitol buildings. I took a few pictures of historical markers on the ground, and I crossed the street to get a shot of the front of the building. As I did this, I spotted a couple that was also taking pictures of the State House, and we exchanged nods of acknowledgment.

As I began walking up the steps and into the front doors, I noticed a few people walking out of the building, and a bedraggled man approaching them. He appeared as though he may have been homeless, and he began telling them about how he was down on his luck, and started asking them for money. As I walked into the building, the Capitol policeman who was running security looked over my shoulder and saw the man through the open door. The policeman was young, blonde, wore glasses, and although he was very friendly, he had the typical no-nonsense demeanor of a policeman. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and walked outside. When the man saw him, he quickly turned away and the group of people began moving toward the street. The policeman said, “Did you just ask them for money?”

“No,” the man said, sheepishly.

Firmly, but not unkindly, the policeman chastised, “If I go ask them they are going to tell me something different, aren’t they? Look, I thought I told you that you can’t do that around here. You need to leave.”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied, and hurried off down the street.

I remember being struck by the gracious way the policeman handled the matter. He could have yelled, or been rude to the man for a repeated situation that they had clearly spoken about before, but he didn’t. The policeman was stern, yet it appeared he had not let his job cloud his compassion. It was a comforting thing to witness as soon as I stepped into the Capitol, because the policeman felt sympathy for the man, who had clearly fallen on hard times.

The policeman came back inside and ran me through the usual security procedures. There was a school group in the entryway just about to begin a tour, so in hushed tones, I told him about the trip, and he pulled out a map of the building and told me where all of the rooms of interest were. I thanked him, and began listening to the school tour as the guide asked all of the kids to lie down on their backs in the rotunda and look up into the dome as she told them a few facts about the building. Philadelphia architect Stephan Button built it in 1847, and it stands 350 feet wide and 119 feet tall. There have been several additions to the original part of the building over the course of the building’s life, and a major restoration from the 1970s to the 1990s returned the building to its late 1800s appearance.

She also pointed out two portraits: Governor George Wallace, and his wife, Governor Lurleen Burns Wallace. Both of them served as Governor during the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement. When George Wallace first entered the Alabama legislature in 1946, he was considered to be moderate on race issues. Later in his career, he took a hard stance against desegregation and used this platform to win votes from the white majority. Wallace’s racist and anti-liberal campaigning tactics during his four unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976 contributed to his decline in popularity. 

Lurleen Burns Wallace was George Wallace’s first wife. She made her own gubernatorial bid in 1966 when George Wallace was unable to repeal the term limits in the Alabama constitution (he later succeeded in repealing the term limits and two of his four terms were consecutive). She ran as “Mrs. George C. Wallace” and promised to keep her husband as her “#1 assistant.”   [This blatant circumvention of the Constitution might have been expected to produce backlash, but instead she was elected.]  She suffered through cancer treatment throughout her campaign, but she maintained a rigorous schedule, hiding her condition from the public. She began to rapidly decline shortly after taking office, and she died in Montgomery on May 7th, 1968. The Wallace portraits hang in the rotunda to honor the first (and to date, only) female governor of Alabama, and the governor who spent the longest amount of time in office.  

On May 15th, 1972 Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace five times while Wallace was campaigning at the Laurel Shopping Center in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace survived, but he was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. During his four terms as governor of Alabama, Wallace managed to repeal a restriction on term limits in the Alabama constitution that prevented any governor from serving consecutive terms. Although he is known as the face of the anti-desegregation movement, Wallace helped the state by establishing a junior college system that has spread throughout the state that prepares high school students for four-year degrees at Auburn University and University of Alabama. 

The group moved on to the House Chamber that was, as usual, the largest room in the building. There were soaring ceilings and tall windows on three sides of the room. The afternoon sun shone on an antique wood burning stove that still sits in the House Chamber. The engravings on the stove were extremely intricate, and the silver exterior reflected the sunlight so intensely that the stove became a focal point of the immense room.

Next the group moved up to the second floor where everyone convened in the Senate Gallery. It was decorated mostly in green, and the chairs below were arranged in a semi-circular shape.  As the tour group settled down to listen, the tour guide began telling us some facts about the room. The room was restored to its late 1800s appearance during a massive renovation in the 1980s. Here in the Senate Chamber, the Confederacy was signed into existence, and this building became the Capitol of the Confederate States of America. The guide told the group that many years ago, the legislature decided it would be a good idea to sell refreshments in the rotunda, including alcohol, for the citizens that decided to come to the Capitol to watch the legislative proceedings. As the spectators became increasingly intoxicated, their objections would become more and more boisterous, and it was not uncommon for citizens in the gallery to pelt their Senators with peanuts if they did not agree with something they said or how they voted on an issue. This is perhaps one of the many origins of the phrase, “Quiet in the peanut gallery!”

There were two other rooms in the back of the building that are used for gatherings and other purposes. One of the rooms housed a memorial to Alabama veterans, and another was currently displaying a school project in which elementary students had designed their own poster about “saying no to drugs.” Finally, there was a gift shop in the rear of the building, where I purchased my stately souvenirs, a postcard and a keychain.

I walked to the front of the building to return to my car, and on my way out, I stopped to talk to the Capitol policeman and the tour guide, both of whom were in the front entranceway. I had a long conversation with them about the trip and various other things, and gave them each a card for the blog. The guide recommended the Civil Rights Center as well as the Rosa Parks Museum as other places that I might be interested in visiting. It was already almost 4, so I decided to visit one of them the next day before driving to Atlanta.

The following morning I woke up, packed, and checked out before heading back downtown to visit the Rosa Parks Museum. I decided to go there because it focused specifically on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and how those events in the small town of Montgomery would eventually change the country forever. As I drove into town, I noticed that there was almost nobody around. It was a fairly nice downtown with a few stores, plenty of parking spaces and nice wide sidewalks, but there was hardly anyone to be seen. It was a Saturday, so I guessed everyone in Montgomery either went to Birmingham or had something else to do.

I took a few pictures of the front of the building, but when I entered I was informed that photography was not allowed inside of the museum. I purchased tickets and headed into the room across the hall, where a fairly large group was gathering for the tour. The guide came in and shut the door. She asked everyone to sit down and told us that we were going to see a video about the night Rosa Parks was arrested, detailing the events before, during, and after the arrest itself. The video began by introducing the main people involved in the boycott, including Rosa Parks, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend E.B. Nixon, who was president of the local chapter of the NAACP. It went on to describe the night that Rosa Parks was arrested, including the fact that her resistance was not actually illegal. Rosa Parks was sitting in the row of the bus that is designated for both black and white citizens, and it was a custom rather than a law demanding that blacks give up those seats for white passengers. Rosa Parks was not breaking the law, but when she refused to move, she was arrested nonetheless.

This moment of resistance sparked a ripple throughout the town, in large part because Rosa Parks was well known and liked on both “sides” of Montgomery. She was a 40-year-old seamstress that was acquainted with everyone. Not only was she an active member of the church in the African American community, but she had also hemmed dresses for wealthy, white debutantes and was friendly with their parents. She was liked throughout all levels of society within Montgomery, and this fact made her resistance the most profound. She was such a kind person that the entire town was surprised to hear of her arrest, and this was a very powerful factor in the bus boycott.

When Parks was arrested, she was permitted to make one phone call. She called E.B. Nixon, who was not only her minister but was also the president of the NAACP. He immediately called Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who began planning a meeting for the next morning. There the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed, and they planned to organize a long-threatened boycott of the buses.  Black customers’ fares were the mainstay of the bus system’s budget. Jo Ann Robinson, a professor at Alabama State College and president of Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council, worked all night with a student at the college mimeographing flyers to be handed out in the black community. They made a total of 52,500 flyers calling for a one-day bus boycott on Monday, December 5th, the day of Park’s trial.

            On December 5th, Parks was convicted of violating segregation laws. That day, the buses ran empty.  A full 99% of Montgomery’s black population took part in the boycott, and walked to work that day. Later that evening, the black community gathered at Holt Street Baptist Church to discuss the boycott, and how to continue it. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at that gathering, stressing the importance of nonviolent protest, no matter what opposition, retaliation, or violence they faced during this boycott. Indeed, they did face severe backlash from the city and white supremacist groups. A large group of the protestors were arrested, including King. Four black churches were bombed, along with King’s and Abernathy’s houses. In order to continue the boycott, the MIA organized a carpool system to help the community’s elderly get around, but officials often harassed those cars, drivers, and passengers. Still, despite all of the difficulties that they faced, the protest continued.

            Finally, almost a year after the protest had begun, the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery’s bus segregation laws unconstitutional on November 26, 1956. The boycott continued until official record of the ruling reached Montgomery, but when it did, King, Abernathy, and a few others rode the buses all day, sitting in the front. This moment was the first major triumph in the Civil Rights Movement, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott inspired many other similar protests in towns across the country. This was the beginning of a long battle that would improve the lives of black Americans everywhere, and it all started with the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

            There is an air of poetic justice about the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the sense that the Civil Rights Movement began in the former capital city of the Confederacy. It was an inspiring message to the rest of the country about the power of the nonviolent protest, and it set a precedent for other protests such as the Nashville sit-ins, during which black college students sat at the lunch counters of different stores in downtown Nashville and refused to give up their seats. When they succeeded in desegregating the lunch counters on May 10th, 1960, it was yet another major step toward racial equality.

            I left the museum feeling restored in my faith in humanity and inspired by the incredible bravery of Rosa Parks and other nonviolent protestors of the Civil Rights movement. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and I was looking forward to the drive to Atlanta. I climbed back in my car and set my sights east towards Georgia.