Racial Healing Pilgrimage
2024
Selma and Montgomery, Alabama
The Road to Selma
Edmund Pettus Bridge
Warm and Sunny Outside The Legacy Museum
The Legacy Museum
What I Felt and Learned…
John Hartfield was a black man who was lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi in 1919 for “allegedly” having a white girlfriend. He was wounded and kept alive for 10 days before his murder. The murder was announced a day in advance in major newspapers, a crowd of 10,000 watched while Hartfield was hanged, shot, and burned.
I felt ANGRY!!!!!
Bernadette Carey Smith was one of the first Black female journalists at The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Times put her on the staff of a women’s news section.
Juanita Abernathy, Civil Rights Activist, helped plan the Montgomery Bus Boycott, had her home bombed, walked from Selma to Montgomery.
She said “the men received most of the credit but behind the scenes women were often the doers, organizers, and advocates who formed the backbone of the struggle.”
Talk with a
Foot Soldier
We got hear from an amazing woman, Joyce O’Neal. Joyce was a 16 year old foot soldier during Bloody Sunday. Her mom encouraged her and her sister to go to all of the mass meetings where they trained everyone about non-violent protesting. She shared her stories of the marches and her experience of growing up in the south during a time when the KKK would drive by black homes with their “costumes” on and she and her sister would have to hide. She told us how she and her Mom, with the Minister’s wife, were a big part in helping during Bloody Sunday by giving water and bandages to the other foot soldiers who were suffering from tear gas burns as they ran back from the Edmund Pettis Bridge.
The foot soldiers are all aging and when they die their first hand stories will die with them. It was amazing to get to hear all she had to say and I am so glad that we got to meet her.
We stayed above the 5 & Dime, an old Woolworths building that has been made into a Community Arts Center. Our first morning we had brunch downstairs and had a ….
5 & Dime Creed
Talk with Retired Priest Fr. Henry Hudson
at St. Paul’s Church in Selma
Henry grew up coming to Selma to visit his grandparents. He told us about:
SERVICE WORK
The Civil Rights Memorial
The Civil Rights Memorial is a place that honors the people who died or were murdered trying to reach the goal to become equal in America.
But that isn't all. It teaches that this fight and this goal have not been reached and that its still going on; specifically, with the murder of George Floyd and so many others, and the Black Lives Matter movement, marches, and protests that began at the start of this decade and continue.
This photo is at the memorial in The Martyr Room. It was a film showing acts of violence, including murders and beatings, but it also showed the victories like when the Selma to Montgomery march ended, the one thousand youths that volunteered to fight for civil rights in Mississippi, and the March to Washington.
This is the Wall of Justice. Visitors are invited to make a personal decision to work toward justice in their own lives and sign the wall.
CIVIL RIGHTS MEMORIAL, PART 2
Out in front of the memorial, there is a circular granite table where water emerges from the center and flows evenly across a timeline that records the major events of the movement and the names of 40 martyrs honored inside the museum. Behind the table, there is a thin sheet of water that flows down a wall inscribed with the words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. “...until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The Wall of Justice:
I put my name
on the Wall of Justice where it flowed down with the names of a half million others.
We watched two different films presented in the museum. In the longer film, we heard the names of many civil rights martyrs and activists. Many were names I quickly recognized and many were also new to me.
Church of the Good Shepherd
Father Larry who makes
fantastic tomato soup!
Father Larry explained some of the history of local churches once the Emancipation Proclamation went through. Churches that had had areas for slaves to worship quickly kicked out the newly freed people.
This is the Church of the Good Shepherd’s banner which is very different than most Episcopalian banners.
This was our second year being welcomed at this church! It was great to see the friends we made last year again and make new ones.
The Harris House
What I Learned
Upon approaching the home we were welcomed with a plethora of information and first hand accounts from Valda Harris.
Freedom Rider- a person who challenged racial laws in the American South in the 1960s, originally by refusing to abide by the laws designating that seating in buses be segregated by race.
Diane Nash- one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC in 1961 which was a huge part f the civil rights movement.
A.D King- fought for civil rights and was successful in a 1968 campaign for an open housing ordinance which is a component of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.Brother to Martin Luther king
Richard Harris House, Pt. 2
His daughter, Valda showed, us around the house. Her daughter lives there but lets it be used as a museum as well.
She told us how Martin Luther King Jr. used to plan in this house when she was younger. We saw a photo of him leaning against the refrigerator in the kitchen we sat in.
She remembers being 13 when the Freedom Riders came to find shelter. All she knew was that they were cute college students. She later came to understand just how important they were.
Peace and Justice Memorial
The Peace and Justice Memorial was a very difficult experience. Seeing all the names and dates of when people were lynched or murdered…
The number of names is insane. There are over 4,400 names here but they know there were many more lynchings that went undocumented.
One memory that stands out to me of the Peace and Justice Memorial was a county that had 10 names of people, all unknown, and all lynched on the same date. When I looked up the incident, nothing came up. I think it was a county in Illinois.
Sculpture by Kwama
Akoto-Bamfo
This statue is part of the Nkyinkyim (meaning twisting) installation project by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo. He also has an installation in the Legacy Museum representing the Africans who died at sea during the Middle Passage.
After walking through the hanging plaques, representing the lynchings, duplicate plaques are laid out like graves.
The Center for Humanity
by the River
The Center for Humanity was a moving experience where we got to learn and talk about hard things like slavery and what people went through during the time of slavery. We also heard a reenactment of a woman who lost her children to her “owner” and how hard it was to have her children taken from her.
When Afriye was doing the reenactment of a women (all women) who lost her children to slavery, she mentioned how she was promised she could keep her last child and how that promise was broken.
She reached for our hands and made direct eye contact with us while asking us where her children were and how she wonders if they're still out there and where they are.
The emotions that expressed were so real it felt as though we were really there watching. This was definitely a meaningful and difficult experience.
We ended by dancing to Jon Baptiste’s Freedom which we’ll hear at the end.
Journaling and Processing
AQUARIUM!!!
It was Hard Stuff but
there was so much fun too!
A Meta Moment:
Watching Selma in Selma
And great food!
At Lannie’s BBQ
At Pannie-Georges
At the 5 & Dime
(we’re taking names for next year!)