Hello everyone!
Today we all took a day trip to Selma, Alabama where the March from Selma to Montgomery started.
Starting out in the Visitors Interpretive Center, I soon found myself a group of three other students to walk around the town in before our first museum tour. I walked to the First Baptist Church as well as the Brown Chapel AME Church where many people started the march. I saw the prison where Martin Luther King Jr. was held as well.
When we met back up with the group as a whole, we all walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Bloody Sunday happened. This was one of the attempts of the march where state troopers were waiting for the marchers to cross. The marchers were attacked with tear gas, horses, and beaten with bludgers. As I walked across the bridge, I began to sing to myself a song from the Civil Rights Movement and thought about the people who were beaten and intimidated that day. It was truly a profound experience.
At the end of the bridge was the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute where Sam Walker greeted us and introduced us to the exhibit. He was one of the marchers in the March from Selma to Montgomery and went to jail twice for his participation at the age of eleven. In this museum, they have casts of the footprints of those involved in the March. Some of the footprints are of people who were very young, like Mr. Walker, and some who were older. It was amazing to see the casts of these people surrounded by documentation of black female activists, the participation of various churches, and the insight of influential men during the time of the Civil Rights.
From here, we walked back across the bridge to the Ancient Africa Enslavement and Civil War Museum. Annie Pearl Avery was there to welcome us. The first thing she said to us was we could Google her, and I would suggest this because her story is truly amazing. She was also part of the Selma to Montgomery March and was the only one arrested on Bloody Sunday. This was not her first time in jail though, nor was it her last. She took so much pride in being part of the Civil Rights Movement and standing up for what she believed in.
When we got back to Resurrection Parish, dinner was a hash with potatoes, bacon, and bell peppers. Melissa and I made a few cakes for those of us on the trip whose birthday is in May, which is five people. We celebrated together and had some good laughs before reflection and bed.
I will leave you with a quote I saw in the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute:
“America is not like a blanket – one person of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt – many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread” – Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson
Thats all for now!
-Kimmy