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What I Finally Know

Posted by Jeannie | July 23rd, 2010

“Do you remember when this happened?” “What did you know about this growing up?”

These were the kind of questions I got from the boys during our Civil Rights Tour this summer—to Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama and to Memphis, Tennessee. The kind of questions I had to answer with some version of ignorance—no, nothing, can’t remember, we didn’t talk about it.

The boys in front of the church in Birmingham, where in September 1963 4 girls were killed in a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan.

I’m embarrassed to admit this to them—and to you—but I knew very little about the details of the Civil Rights struggle, until these past few months studying those years with the boys. Yes, I knew the name Rosa Parks and that she wouldn’t give up her seat on some bus. Yes, I knew there was a famous I-Have-A-Dream Speech, and that Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1986 (when I was 7 years old). And I absolutely knew that blacks were treated unfairly, often cruelly and inhumanely, through out much of our history since the Civil War (of course, they were treated in an unspeakable ways before the Civil War).

But even though most of the major events of the Civil Rights movement happened immediately before my birth or while I was a child, they seemed to me to be some sort of distant, foggy history. It’s as if it was someone else’s history–not my own.

This is probably why I became so overwhelmed with emotion when I stood at the exact corner in Montgomery, Alabama, where Rosa Parks was taken off the bus and arrested or when I walked across the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge, scene of much violence in Selma, Alabama, or when I looked at the sculptures of ferocious police dogs lunging forward to bite in a park in Birmingham where real ferocious police dogs lunged forward to bite protesters or when I raised my eyes to look at the exact spot where Martin Luther King fell on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

I kept thinking, “This just happened.” And I chided myself for not getting that sooner.

The boys looking at replicas of the high-powered water hose guns that were used to spray protesters in Birmingham.

We decided to study Civil Rights at Robb’s suggestion; he thought it was a way for us to do some real experiential learning on something important without traveling overseas. I also thought, with Barak Obama’s presidency, it was a good time to look at how far we’ve come as a nation.

But now that I think about it, I probably wanted to take on Civil Rights was so that I could learn what I’d never learned. Not just the details of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Little Rock Nine and the Lunch Counter Sit-Ins and the Freedom Rides, but how everything fit together. This is not the kind of thing that is taught in schools—not when I was growing up and not now. Through out our studies and at the museums we visited (I highly recommend the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis), there were so many times the boys or I said, “How could they do that?” “How could people be so mean to each other?” How could people wave signs “Keep Our Christian Nation,” while protesting the integration of the Little Rock schools?

Obviously, not talking is a way to deny these shameful things really happened. I’m just glad that the boys won’t grow up ignorant to this recent, painful history. Understanding what happened from slavery to the Civil War to Jim Crow to the Voting Rights Act will make them appreciate, I hope, how truly resilient the U.S. is. I firmly believe no other country in the world could have made so much progress so quickly. That makes me extra proud to be an American.

The boys in front of the spot where Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

I’m also glad the boys are now able to recognize racial injustice and ugliness. Yesterday Gus and I were in the car listening to NPR when we heard a report about black farmers who said they couldn’t get the same type of loans from the Department of Agriculture as white farmers. Gus looked at me and said, “Hey, it’s still happening.”

Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham and Memphis

Posted by Gus | July 21st, 2010

The boys at the base of the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where one of the most important Civil Rights marches took place in 1965.

A couple of weeks ago, on our way to the beach, we went to the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. There we got on a fake bus with a robot driver and ” went back in time” to see the history of segregation and slavery. Then we “came back to the present” and went to the real museum.

At the museum we watched a film about some people that helped the Civil Rights movement. Some of the photos on the wall were of Virginia Durr, Charles Durr and Thurgood Marshall. The Durrs were white activists that helped Rosa Parks. Thurgood Marshall was an attorney who argued Brown vs. the Board of Education, in which the supreme court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Later he became the first black justice on the Supreme Court of the U.S.

In the next part of the museum we saw a film projected onto the windows of a bus and saw what happened the night Rosa was arrested as someone outside the bus would have seen that night. She was sitting in the black section of the bus. The white section and the black part were full so the driver asked her to move in an unfriendly way, so a white person could have her seat. When she said no the driver called the police and arrested her. After that the bus boycott began. We also saw the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church were Martin Luther King Jr. preached during the boycott, which lasted 382 days.

Then we went to Selma. At Selma we saw the bridge the protesters tried to cross 3 times in 1965. The first time they were repelled violently; that day has ever since been known as Bloody Sunday. The second time they were stopped nonviolently and the third time they made it through and marched for four days to Montgomery.

This is the park in Birmingham where fierce police dogs were unleashed on protesters.

A couple weeks later we went to Birmingham, Alabama to see the park were the Birmingham police sprayed children with high power water hoses. 200 pounds per square inch was the exact amount. Klan members also killed 6 children. 4 girls were killed and one lost an eye when a bomb was thrown into a church. Later two boys were shot.

After that we went to Memphis and saw the motel were Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. It is now a museum with a replica of the bus that Rosa Parks was arrested on and the Freedom Riders bus. It had dioramas of the sit-ins and many protests before and after the Voting Rights act. We even got to see the room Martin and his friend stayed in before he was killed. Room 306.

Across the street we saw the window from which the assassin shot Martin Luther King Jr. There was a small museum about what happened. Outside there is a lady protesting the museum because she was kicked out of the motel room she was living in and has been protesting for 22 years and 165 days. She thinks they should use the museum to house homeless people and train them in jobs. What would you think is better: helping one hundred homeless people or educating thousands of people a year on Civil Rights?

My opinion is educating thousands of people a year on Civil Rights is better because those people will go teach more people and help other people to learn about Civil Rights. These people might even form groups that help homeless and poor people.

After learning about Civil Rights, I just hope that I won’t ever become like the bad people from that time. I’m surprised that all

There was a sculpture in the park that commemorated where the dog attacks took place. The charging dogs stuck out from the walls of the sculpture. They reminded me of gargoyles on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris--but much more sinister.

this happened only 50 some odd years ago. When I first got examples of what happened I thought a little lower of the U.S. How could anyone do such bad things to other people even if they had a different color skin and then go and call it right? Would you? I would not and I hope you agree. But since that time we’ve come a long way and now we have a president that is black. The United States is a nation that has a lot of rapid change and is coming close to having complete equality.

On the Civil Rights Trail

Posted by Jeb | July 21st, 2010

Jeb sitting in peace with a statue of Rosa Parks at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery.

On our Civil Rights tour, we started with the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955 Rosa Parks sat down on a bus, eventually there was no room for whites to sit down, so the bus driver (Blake) told the blacks in the first row to get up and stand. Every body stood up except Rosa. She said a firm “no” and wouldn’t move from her seat.

So Blake called the police and they arrested Rosa Parks. This is important because it gave the blacks a case to challenge the law about buses. The blacks boycotted the buses in Montgomery and finally they got the state to change the law.

In the voting rights museum it was boring but one of strange thing is that there were KKKK (Ku Klux Klan Knights) robes.

In Selma Alabama, in 1965, a group of marchers were trying to get across the bridge to the other side but waiting for them were some marshals. They marched right into them. The men with billy clubs beat them up. That day was known as Bloody Sunday. After two other attempts they finally made it past and marched to Montgomery the state capital.

The boys in front of the infamous Lorraine Motel in Memphis--the site of Martin Luther King Jrs assassination. The National Civil Rights Museum is now housed there.

In Memphis Tennessee we visited the motel were King was assassinated. King was standing on a balcony when he got shot by a man with a sniper rifle across the road, it wasn’t an instant death shot but he died shortly after. They had a replica of the bus Rosa was on, a replica of a Greyhound bus that was set on fire after a mob of whites burned it and a replica of a sit in at a diner. All this and more in one museum.

We got to see where the assassin was staying across the street. The place where he shot from was a bathroom window. He was caught a few weeks later and he was found guilty for the assassination.

In Birmingham Alabama 3,000 kids were getting attacked by dogs and sprayed by water hoses. The adults were too afraid so the children took their place. The adults didn’t think they would hurt the children. But the children were being bitten and barked at. The fire houses sprayed 200 pounds per square inch. Many hid behind trees but many more got the impact.

Seeing all this and hearing all this and studying it made me feel angry and disappointed that we’ve done stuff that cruel. It didn’t seem to make much difference to the whites back then that the Constitution has the phrase “All men are created equal” because they didn’t follow it. But the blacks knew what the Constitution said and tried to get people to follow it. I don’t know why people didn’t want to follow the rules and treat other people nicely.

BYE, JEB

EYES

Posted by Jeb | May 29th, 2010

Mom’s Note: While studying slavery and civil rights, I asked the boys to write a few paragraphs about how it might feel if discrimination was based on eye color, rather than skin color. Here are Jeb’s thoughts:

What if, just what if, you had different color eyes and somebody thought you weren’t equal because of it? They thought that green eyes were better than blue, but blue was better than brown and black. You had to use different bathrooms, different drinking fountains and different buses.

It was kind of like that back in the 1800s and 1900s, except there was no blue in the middle. I hope I don’t sound racist, but the black and brown eyes are like African Americans and the greens are like whites. It would not be fun because I could not play Warhammer 40K with my brother or my friends. I have blue eyes and Gus has green eyes.

I would be protesting against it so that there could be equality. It would be a nightmare come true. But luckily it’s only a thought and everyone is equal.

Racial Discrimination

Posted by Gus | May 29th, 2010

How would you feel if you could not drink from the same water fountain as your friend? What if the reason for that was that you had green eyes? It is the same with racism.

It would be horrible just to be told you could not do something because of the color of your eyes. It was the same thing with segregation. Would think it was fair?

What if the people went around calling you green or brown because of your eye color? I don’t think anyone would like it. Just stop for a minute and think, Is it fair to do stuff like that and call people stuff like that just because they have a different skin color? If your answer was previously yes and is now no, then my mission is complete. If it is still yes, then I pity you and your sorry ways.