When I was walking in Memphis…and Alabama

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I’ve waited quite a few days to write about my time in both Memphis and Alabama. I’ve been struggling a bit to figure out how to put into words the things my eyes saw and my heart felt . While Memphis is well known to have birthed Rock n Roll at its famous Sun Studio and also The King himself, Mr. Elvis Presley having his famous Graceland home there, what I would find there that moved me more than any hip shaking Elvis song could, was the National Civil Rights Museum located inside the repurposed Lorraine Motel.  If you are unfamiliar with the Lorraine Motel, it is the motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the day of his assassination.  Outside room 306 was where he stood before James Earl Ray fired those fateful shots.  I am sure it was no mistake that as you head to the entrance of the museum, you pass right by that room and see the flowered wreath that still lies there in his honor.  Taking a minute, I stood there and thought about how a story I have heard countless times was really unfolding in front of me for the first time.

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Please know that anything I say or I guess in essence write about my experience in these places comes from a place that knows its privilege.  These are simply my feelings and experiences not my opinions that I think should be listened to.  This is a very similar feeling I had when I wrote about my experience at Dachau Concentration Camps while in Germany last summer.  I felt, “Who am I, to write these things, share these thoughts?”  

The National Civil Rights Museum provides you with an in-depth look and timeline from when Slaves were first brought from West Africa all the way up to the present day.  There is so much that is simply glossed over in American History. Growing up, I think my history books would have had me believing that slavery ended with Lincoln and all is good now.  Thankfully, I didn’t stick to those history books and have tried to dig and find as much as I can of the truth and what lies beneath it.  When you enter the first part of the exhibit, there are a few statues and life-size depictions.  One of which I had seen portrayed in books, but I was not prepared to see it to scale. 

I would find myself having to walk away from certain exhibits because I would be in tears and didn’t think I had the right to be. But I thought any human with a heart has to feel this and how terribly wrong it all was. 

As I walked through time, I began to see storylines I recognized and ones that brought new light to things I had already thought I knew. In regards to segregation in schools, I had known about “The Little Rock Nine”, knew who Ruby Bridges was and also knew all about Brown vs. the Board of Education.  But when I sat myself down in a mock desk with a first-grade girl’s face staring back at me with the note that said when they chose the younger children to integrate, they’d hoped it would lead to less violence.  I can’t imagine being in a space where you had to choose your children as your first line of offense to fight for what should have truly been yours, to begin with.  And it wasn’t just young children, it was high school children and college students.  All wanting to be given the same chance as their white neighbors.  People might argue with me and say a college student isn’t a child or a kid in high school isn’t a child, but think about how you’d talk about the children in your family and ask yourself if you ever don’t think of them as children.  These children lived their lives like adults and the adults they met in protest acted as if they were children…very very vile children. 

There is a piece of black history that I’m sure everyone knows.  That is the day that an “old” woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the bus.   I put old in quotes for a reason.  For one, Rosa Parks wasn’t old.  Heck, I’m not too proud to say that she was just a year and a half older than I am now and I’m not old.  I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but when I recall learning about her, she was old.  That was the story I remember. I mean sure 42 probably seemed ancient to me, but I only learned of her exact age a few months ago, as I got older myself why didn’t I see her for what she was….a trailblazer in her own right for sure, but a women of middle age, not someone’s grandma.  It also is a known fact that she wasn’t the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus, it was Claudette Colvin a 15-year-old girl who 9 months prior had refused and was arrested.  Because Claudette was a teenager and pregnant the NAACP did not think she would be a good face for their movement because people would only focus on her being pregnant and not what she stood for.  In steps, or sits a Secretary for the NAACP, Ms. Rosa Parks.  The museum has a life-sized bus with a replica of Ms. Parks on the bus and you can go inside.  What happens after you walk in is you are barraged with blasting audio of insults and threats that were made to Rosa on that day.  I lasted all of 20 seconds after they started, she sat through it all. I don’t know if I can gain that kind of grit and courage in the next year and a half, but I want to hope it’s what I will strive for.

As I turned another corner, I was met by another bus. Only this bus had been burned and almost demolished.  This was the representation of the Freedom Riders bus that was firebombed in Anniston, Alabama.  Another example of children being attacked by grown men and people looking the other way.  One 12-year-old white girl named Janie Miller decided that she could not look the other way and tried to help the victims choking from the smoke by bringing them water.  Janie and her family were soon run out of their town by the KKK.  Both my bus experiences made me a little sick and once again I found myself tearing up and having to walk away. I wanted to think I could be brave like Janie and just sit with my feelings but I wasn’t.

Of all the exhibits and all the feelings, it wasn’t a particular exhibit that gave me my biggest emotional response, it was what I witnessed while I was watching a short clip of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma, Alabama.  I wasn’t alone in this little viewing area.  I was sharing the space with a mom and her young son.  I noticed as we began watching people, not too much older than her son get savagely beaten she quietly reached for his hand and did not let it go.  Because of the color of her son’s skin, she will always have to worry about what is going to happen when she lets go of his hand.  She can’t trust that even if he does everything right, someone else won’t see his color first and his actions second.  I want to wish that as we watched a film of something that had happened over 50 years ago we’d have come further than this, but if we are all honest with ourselves we haven’t.  On my journey across the country I’ve been pulled over twice (so far), sorry Mom and Dad that this is the first time you are hearing about this.  In both instances, I was doing something wrong, speeding.  In both cases, I was let go with a warning.  Was it my skin color? I don’t know?  It certainly was not my cool demeanor when the officers pulled me over.  If anyone knows me I do not do well with getting in trouble, heck I have a hard time jaywalking so I was a bit unnerved.  But yet I drove away with no fine, no hassle and no more than a “be careful out there.” One is left to wonder.  I’m also left to know I need to slow down.

I decided that after leaving Memphis, I would drive to Birmingham,  Alabama, stay the night and then get up in the morning to walk around some of the places I had learned about.  I wanted to visit the Kelly Ingram Park that was a focal point of the Children’s Crusade.  In 1963 children as young as 8 years old walked out of their schools and began a peaceful march.  It didn’t stay peaceful for long.  These children were met with high-pressure water cannons and over 600 of them were arrested…including the 8-year-olds.  Upon entering the park you are met with a statue to commemorate the four girls who would in 1964 lose their lives in the 16th Street Baptist church bombing. 

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Actually, if you turned your body around from the statues you’d be staring at the place those girls took their last breaths, giggling while they put on their choir robes.  I knelt down at the statue and said a little prayer for those children and as I got up, I saw another group of children on what looked like a field trip.  It reminded me of when I visited the Concentration Camps in Germany. I was told that once you are in 8th grade in Germany you are required to visit the camps as part of your education and of what has happened in your own country.  It made me think about it then and even more now.  These places and faces need to be on the field trip lists for children in the United States.  I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t need to go to the Museum of Science…again.    I started my walk and was soon joined by an older gentleman that wanted to tell me even more history than I could have learned from just reading the plaques.  He was two years old and living right on that block when the bomb went off.  And not that he remembers, but his family’s stories of that time were perfectly engrained in his mind to tell me.  After a few moments, he asked me if I wanted to walk with him to see more, to learn more.  I wondered if maybe at some point, he might ask for a donation or something, but I knew that even if he did it would all be worth it.  Fred took me to the statue of his granddad Reverend Smith who was kneeling alongside the two other clergymen who “filled in” when Dr. King was arrested.  He was afraid I wouldn’t believe him that it was his grandfather, so he pulled out his license and told me I could look it up.  I never did. Didn’t need to. 

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While we walked through the park he told me the significance of some of the brick colorings.  The bricks were red, brown, yellow, black and white to signify the bible song the children could be heard chanting in the park on the days of the march. The lyrics read:

“Jesus loves the little children

All the children of the world
Red, brown, yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children
Of the world.”

The bricks and the song reminded me of a picture I saw the day before also speaking about god and love.  Is it so hard to think that we are all equal of whatever god you pray to’s love?   

Fred told me he also wanted me to see some other parts of Birmingham and asked me cautiously, “Uh do you know the Temptations?”  Umm, I get it, when you look at me I scream NKOTB, Backstreet Boys, NSync, but sir I have been in love with the boy bands long before my time and who didn’t know and love the Temptations.  I even got up on stage with them and did my best “My Girl.”

Fred also took me to the Barber College which was awesome and then we popped into the Civil Rights Center.  The volunteer working there started to ask me if I wanted to buy things and Fred quickly shook his head and escorted me out the door.  I was glad I stopped by the park that day and I was glad that Fred thought a gal like me might be interested in what he had to say.

Last stop in Alabama was Selma.  I wanted to stand on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and have some of the strength and courage that has crossed that bridge fill my soul.  I will never have to face anything like those people did, but I do so hope if I’m faced with a situation where courage and fire under grace of epic proportions are needed, I will think of them and make my own waves.

I realize that in taking so long to write this, it has put me a bit behind in my posting.  I hope that now that I am over this hurdle, I will get back on track and put together my thoughts on Savannah and Charleston in a timely manner.  That last word was a hint about these places…the manners on these people…what a breath of fresh air.  I don’t even mind being called Ma’am 20 times a day.  But that is for another post.  I told myself I could write until 10:30 and then watch an episode of Stranger Things. It’s now 11:30, so I must go.  XOXO, Caitlin