After visiting the Tuskegee Institute—the university that
Booker T. Washington founded for black people in 1888—we drove to the Alabama
state capitol building in Montgomery to visit the site where the 1965 march
from Selma to Montgomery ended. Launched by local African-Americans who were fighting
for voting rights (which had been taken from the black community since the
Reconstruction Era ended), the first march to the state capitol was met by the
local police who carried clubs and tear gas. After visiting the state capitol, we
drove to Selma to walk on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where “Bloody Sunday,” as this
initial attempt was later called, took place.
Ricky on the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, location of "Bloody Sunday." |
The following day, we visited Birmingham, home to many other
important events in the Civil Rights Movement, and today, to the Civil Rights
Museum. After buffering the detailed knowledge we were slowly gaining about the
movement, we went to a local barber on the historical Fourth Avenue, so that
Ricky could groom his wild beard and tresses. While Ricky was getting his
haircut, I chatted with some of the barbers outside about their experiences of growing
up in Birmingham, and answered some questions about the ways in which
Birmingham differed from New York. This barber shop had been opened for fifty
years, so I knew there must have been some fascinating history that surrounded
it.
The next day, we finally arrived in Mississippi, a place
that was most alive in my imagination as a home to both violent racial clashes
and also a musical movement that stemmed from the trauma of these tensions—the Delta
Blues. Our first stop, unrelated to Civil Rights, was Tupelo, the childhood
home of Elvis Presley. After reading firsthand accounts from Elvis’s teachers and
friends who described the future King as a shy, seemingly untalented boy, we
decided that there were more interesting things to be discovered in Mississippi
and moved on to Oxford, home of Ole Miss—the oldest university in Mississippi
and the site of 1962 riots that resulted from the enrollment of the school’s
first black student.
That day, we also reached our destination of Charleston, Mississippi,
where Myrna, my parents’ part-time neighbor in New York, lives most of the
year. The original plan was to stay with her in the Delta region, so that we
could visit Clarksdale, the home of the Delta blues, and potentially Memphis,
the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. But we soon changed our plans when Myrna
announced that, as a chairperson for Mississippi State University’s art
department, she was invited to stay at the president’s guest house for those
few days. Assuming that that information simply meant that we would stay at her
house alone, we were again surprised when she told us that we were invited to
stay with her at the guest house. Although we were looking forward to spending time
in the Delta, we decided that it would at least be a welcome respite from the
past three weeks of relentless travel. Since Myrna had a dentist appointment in
Memphis the following morning, we ended up going to the Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination
sight and museum before heading off to the university.
The Lorraine Motel, the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. |
One of the many rooms in the president's guest house. |
But that illusion was quickly shattered at some point in Clarksdale, to which we finally made our way after our two-day respite. Outside the Delta Blues Museum (a wholly underwhelming presentation of an otherwise fascinating musical genre), an old, black man asked: “Ya’ll from Israel?”
We looked at each other, and then looked at him: “Um, no. We’re
from New York.”
He continued. “Oh, cause ya’ll look like Jews. Ya’ll aren’t Jews
are you?”
At this point we weren’t really sure what to respond. It didn’t
seem like a particularly menacing question. Just a strangely-phrased one. Did
he want credit for correctly identifying us? Or was there something more sinister
underlying the question? And more importantly, does he really think Jews only live
in Israel? (Has he heard of New York??)
In any case, we mumbled
a vague response and quietly walked away.
Ironically, it was the first time in the south that I
actually felt a sense of being different. Ricky and I embarked on this trip
with the intention of seeing and experiencing new things. But we never
accounted for the fact that to those new things, we were new things too.
Hi Rick & Brahna,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog with your skilled English & Philosophy major backgrounds! We'll have to check out the roadside america website. Guess that is where you are finding the seedy motels for overnights!
We are now at Sam Houston Jones SP, L. Charles, LA where the mosquitoes are ferocious. Leaving tomorrow for a primitive campground on the LA/TX border on the coast in TX.
Best wishes,
Sue and Ian in the Scamp