Well, the day has been quite a powerful one. In fact, this was my favorite day of the entire trip. The day started in Montgomery at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s house while he was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. I LOVED seeing where MLK lived with his family, planned the Bus Boycott, survived a bombing attempt on his family, and had an epiphany that God needed Martin to succeed in the Civil Rights movement and his family would be protected by the Lord. The table where the Bus Boycott was planned was in that house, and it just blew my mind that I could touch the chairs and tables where these great minds planned the very event that changed the course of America.
Our next step on the journey was the bus station that the Freedom riders stopped at when they were brutally attacked and mobbed. It was surreal to be at this pivotal place in the Civil Rights Movement. I was impressed or shocked to see that on that wall of information there was a quote from someone that said they were shocked that white people would be involved in the Freedom Rides. To me this illustrates that there were people across race lines that were willing to recognize what was right and not just "go with the flow" of society. I am glad that there were, in fact, some people that could show the black people that they were not alone in their struggle for human rights.
Selma. Wow. What can I say about Selma? It was absolutely incredible! Let me first say that the reason I wanted to come on this trip was not necessarily for myself, but for my future students. I am studying to be a High School History teacher, so every experience I have on this trip I think about how I could use this to better impress upon my students the importance of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle that the black people faced in America for hundreds of years. All that to say, my experience in the Southern Civil War museum was heavily fueled by how much my students could benefit from this. I think that students can sometimes form a disconnect between what happened so many years ago and what is happening now and how it effects them. If the students could actually feel how it was for the slaves I believe they could better comprehend what an atrocity it was. When we began this reenactment experience I thought that we were experiencing what it might be like to be arrested in the 60s and be black. I think that is a very significant mistake to make. The fact that I couldn't tell what was happening impresses upon me how awful it really was in the 60s and how things really hadn't changed for them much at all from slavery to "freedom". I really enjoyed everyone's candor after the experience during our large group meeting. I loved hearing what everyone from every color was feeling after all that we felt and saw.
All in All, this day was INCREDIBLE. Everyone, from high school up, should experience what we experienced at the Civil War museum. This trip is really opening my eyes to what the 60s really were like. I wonder why we don't hear much about racism before the 60s and why the awful things happened to them for so long before some decided they had had enough. Just things to ponder....
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