I tried to go to the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, but it was closed. Nooooooo! Luckily, I plan on going back to the Southeast next summer.
The Tuskegee Institute is in the same town. There are several areas to this national monument, so I chose to visit the George Washington Carver Museum. I watched movie and explored the displays of all the things he invented. What a brilliant man! I thought it was especially interesting how he made paint pigments from Alabama clay. I took lots of notes at this site and put them on my Instagram post, but I archived the post (along with many others; there were way too many pictures of my face for this contest) and now I can't find it. :-(
My next stop was the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. I didn't go all the way to Selma, which I now regret after seeing the movie Selma. (This site affected me so much that I bought a class set of "Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom" for my students, and then we watched Selma.) The place I visited was the Lowndes Interpretive Center, partway between Selma and Montgomery. This was an excellent museum. Although it's way out in the middle of nowhere, it is well worth a visit. The ranger and I spoke for about 45 minutes about civil rights, both then and now. One thing that really struck me during our conversation was that the civil rights movement didn't really happen that long ago. It's hard to believe that people were treated this way so recently. But then, I see things on the news that tell me we still have such a long way to go.
From there, I had a long drive to Anniston, Alabama, where Freedom Riders National Monument is located. There's not much to see here; just a historic marker and a mural in the alley where the Greyhound Station was located. But there were signs that told the whole story of what happened. I felt like crying as I imagined the Klansmen throwing a bomb on the bus, blocking the door so no one could get off and yelling, "Let 'em burn!" I just can't comprehend this level of hatred.
I stayed in an EconoLodge near Birmingham that night, and it was like, the hotel of horrors. There was an enormous cockroach in the bathtub. When I pulled down the sheets, there was a bug in there as well. I asked if I could just get my money back and go to another hotel, but they refused. The offered to give me another room... it was two doors down from the last one, and there were bugs in there, too. And when I got up in the morning, I discovered that the outlet in the bathroom didn't work. There were no other mirrors, so I just couldn't do my hair that day. Why do I have a knack for always picking out the worst hotels???????
The Tuskegee Institute is in the same town. There are several areas to this national monument, so I chose to visit the George Washington Carver Museum. I watched movie and explored the displays of all the things he invented. What a brilliant man! I thought it was especially interesting how he made paint pigments from Alabama clay. I took lots of notes at this site and put them on my Instagram post, but I archived the post (along with many others; there were way too many pictures of my face for this contest) and now I can't find it. :-(
My next stop was the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. I didn't go all the way to Selma, which I now regret after seeing the movie Selma. (This site affected me so much that I bought a class set of "Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom" for my students, and then we watched Selma.) The place I visited was the Lowndes Interpretive Center, partway between Selma and Montgomery. This was an excellent museum. Although it's way out in the middle of nowhere, it is well worth a visit. The ranger and I spoke for about 45 minutes about civil rights, both then and now. One thing that really struck me during our conversation was that the civil rights movement didn't really happen that long ago. It's hard to believe that people were treated this way so recently. But then, I see things on the news that tell me we still have such a long way to go.
From there, I had a long drive to Anniston, Alabama, where Freedom Riders National Monument is located. There's not much to see here; just a historic marker and a mural in the alley where the Greyhound Station was located. But there were signs that told the whole story of what happened. I felt like crying as I imagined the Klansmen throwing a bomb on the bus, blocking the door so no one could get off and yelling, "Let 'em burn!" I just can't comprehend this level of hatred.
I stayed in an EconoLodge near Birmingham that night, and it was like, the hotel of horrors. There was an enormous cockroach in the bathtub. When I pulled down the sheets, there was a bug in there as well. I asked if I could just get my money back and go to another hotel, but they refused. The offered to give me another room... it was two doors down from the last one, and there were bugs in there, too. And when I got up in the morning, I discovered that the outlet in the bathroom didn't work. There were no other mirrors, so I just couldn't do my hair that day. Why do I have a knack for always picking out the worst hotels???????
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