Weapon of Love
Sunday April 07th, Birmingham, Alabama.
Morning came with clearing skies and a realization that we hadn’t been blown to Oz during the evening. The line of storms went by last night without incident ( Ok, the cable TV went out for a little while after a spectacular lightening strike). Even the dogs did pretty well — after freaking out at first the two girls just settled down and Swiffer just lay there and panted and shook. The wind rocked the trailer mightily for an hour or so but we didn’t get the hail that was threatened in the weather alerts on TV and the Weather Network App. So all-in-all I chose well — the trailer park in Natchez I’d considered had flooding problems and the area had an extended tornado warning; east was better than west in this case.
Clearing skies hadn’t been in the forecast but I thought (hoped) this was possible just looking at the patterns in the weather map. There were a few odd sun-showers through the morning but it was still terribly pleasant as we sat in the trailer looking out over the tree lined hills and watched trailer after trailer roll out. There are a lot of Canadians here this weekend on a rolling basis. The park was 80% empty by the time we were ready leave for the museum in Birmingham and more than 80% full tonight.
We spent the morning around the trailer — I caught up on the Blog entries and Lorraine relaxed. Then I had a nap while Lorraine read and watched a little TV. Nice to relax a bit before heading to the Civil Rights Institute downtown for it’s Sunday opening at 1pm.
The Museum was really good — not a lot of artifacts but just a nice set of multimedia displays laying out some of the history of Birmingham from a race perspective. Birmingham didn’t exist until 1871 so it wasn’t built by enslaved peoples so that part of the civil rights narrative can be skipped. It was built by investors from the North looking to build a Pittsburgh of the south and they succeeded. Initially it would seem that everyone working here was treated like crap — white immigrants and black Americans. Pay was poor, and the work dangerous. But as time went on segregation became the rule first by custom and then by law until in the 1920’s Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the South. The museum used dioramas and replicas, some artifacts, pictures, and audio and video clips to the tell the story in a very direct and straight forward way. The injustice and horrible disparity made me tear up more than a few times and Martin Luther King’s speeches always make me cry. There has been no greater American Statesman in my opinion; It is people like him who make America great.
The origins of the civil rights movement in the early labour movements and the African American churches is shown and traced briefly and then the focus becomes much more intense on the local movements that spring up in Birmingham and Montgomery after the NAACP is outlawed in Alabama and the ACMHR and SCLC are formed by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King respectively to fill in the vaccuum. I didn’t know too much about the Rev. Shuttlesworth who was clearly the local organizer for so much of the civil rights efforts — bombed and beaten several times.
One of the artifacts they have is the door to the Birmingham Jail where Martin Luther King wrote his famous “Letter From the Birmingham Jail” — if you haven’t read it I recommend it. I consider it one of the ten most important political documents in the history of the United States. They have the jail cell on one side and excerpts from the letter and the letter from the local white ministers counselling that the protests of 1963 were untimely and unwise on the other. Audio of King reading the letter plays on a loop where it is quiet and around a bend from the other exhibits. The overall effect is profoundly moving and clearly many people were moved to donate as the floor and cot of the prison cell are littered with cash from people who have donated.
Needless to say some of the most powerful moments of the museum follow and provide the climax right after the jail letter the action moves to to the Children’s Crusade movement of May 1963 and the horrific response by that thug Eugene Conner. I didn’t previously know that he had lost the election as head of the city council the month before but had refused to acknowledge the loss. So not only was he a thug but an unelected thug at the time he ordered dogs and water cannon be used in attacking child protesters. Then in Sept 1963 is the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing that killed four little girls. The Church and the Park are both across the street from museum and cover three of the four corners of the intersection of 16th Street and 6th Avenue.
After the tour we went out into the park and walked around the walk of freedom enjoying the very pleasant even hot day. It got to 28C here and humidity made it feel warmer and the forecast rain never really materialized ( Hopefully tomorrow’s rain also holds off). The memorials for the four girls at the Church and at the park across from the museum were both very moving. The memorial in the park also remembers the two young boys killed on the same day. The empty shoes and bare feet on the statues of the girls certainly were very moving.
The museum took more than 3 hours to see so it was after 4pm when we got back in the car and headed south towards the RV park. We needed to grocery shop as the trailer was fairly low on food. Lorraine and I did the usual back and forth on what to do next? Go grocery shop? Go for a Late Lunch/Early Dinner? Just go back to the trailer and eat leftovers?
“What do you want to do?”
“Well what do you want do?”
“No, I asked you first.”
“No, I asked you first.”
“No, you’re driving you decide.”...
In the end my appetite decided — I was way too hungry to grocery shop sanely ( we hadn’t had lunch at all) so I decided to go back to the BBQ restaurant that I got take-out from the night before — Jim N’ Nicks BBQ. This is a small chain of BBQ places and they tick all the boxes. They have take-out, drive-through, a good bar, good biscuits and the smell of wood and cooking pork can kill you if you are hungry. We ordered margaritas and devilled eggs ( Both excellent) while we decided on our mains. Lorraine had a steak with beans and Mac and cheese while I had a 2 meat combo ( because I couldn’t decide — at least I didn’t have 3 meats...) Smoked Sausage Links and Carolina Pulled Pork ( because I missed pulled pork while we were in Santee). Lorraine’s steak was wonderfully smoky and nicely rare. My combo was gigantic — 3 sausage links and about 6oz of perfectly balanced pulled pork. The pork was smoky, moist and rich with a perfect hit of vinegar and chilli. This means that we’ve still got a half steak and two sausage links ( and they are full sized) for breakfast or lunch tomorrow with the sides and leftover pork from last night. We got two banana puddings to go — and I’m not sure we’ll have room for them even now at 9:30... Maybe we’ll split one...
Morning came with clearing skies and a realization that we hadn’t been blown to Oz during the evening. The line of storms went by last night without incident ( Ok, the cable TV went out for a little while after a spectacular lightening strike). Even the dogs did pretty well — after freaking out at first the two girls just settled down and Swiffer just lay there and panted and shook. The wind rocked the trailer mightily for an hour or so but we didn’t get the hail that was threatened in the weather alerts on TV and the Weather Network App. So all-in-all I chose well — the trailer park in Natchez I’d considered had flooding problems and the area had an extended tornado warning; east was better than west in this case.
Clearing skies hadn’t been in the forecast but I thought (hoped) this was possible just looking at the patterns in the weather map. There were a few odd sun-showers through the morning but it was still terribly pleasant as we sat in the trailer looking out over the tree lined hills and watched trailer after trailer roll out. There are a lot of Canadians here this weekend on a rolling basis. The park was 80% empty by the time we were ready leave for the museum in Birmingham and more than 80% full tonight.
We spent the morning around the trailer — I caught up on the Blog entries and Lorraine relaxed. Then I had a nap while Lorraine read and watched a little TV. Nice to relax a bit before heading to the Civil Rights Institute downtown for it’s Sunday opening at 1pm.
The Museum was really good — not a lot of artifacts but just a nice set of multimedia displays laying out some of the history of Birmingham from a race perspective. Birmingham didn’t exist until 1871 so it wasn’t built by enslaved peoples so that part of the civil rights narrative can be skipped. It was built by investors from the North looking to build a Pittsburgh of the south and they succeeded. Initially it would seem that everyone working here was treated like crap — white immigrants and black Americans. Pay was poor, and the work dangerous. But as time went on segregation became the rule first by custom and then by law until in the 1920’s Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the South. The museum used dioramas and replicas, some artifacts, pictures, and audio and video clips to the tell the story in a very direct and straight forward way. The injustice and horrible disparity made me tear up more than a few times and Martin Luther King’s speeches always make me cry. There has been no greater American Statesman in my opinion; It is people like him who make America great.
The origins of the civil rights movement in the early labour movements and the African American churches is shown and traced briefly and then the focus becomes much more intense on the local movements that spring up in Birmingham and Montgomery after the NAACP is outlawed in Alabama and the ACMHR and SCLC are formed by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King respectively to fill in the vaccuum. I didn’t know too much about the Rev. Shuttlesworth who was clearly the local organizer for so much of the civil rights efforts — bombed and beaten several times.
One of the artifacts they have is the door to the Birmingham Jail where Martin Luther King wrote his famous “Letter From the Birmingham Jail” — if you haven’t read it I recommend it. I consider it one of the ten most important political documents in the history of the United States. They have the jail cell on one side and excerpts from the letter and the letter from the local white ministers counselling that the protests of 1963 were untimely and unwise on the other. Audio of King reading the letter plays on a loop where it is quiet and around a bend from the other exhibits. The overall effect is profoundly moving and clearly many people were moved to donate as the floor and cot of the prison cell are littered with cash from people who have donated.
Needless to say some of the most powerful moments of the museum follow and provide the climax right after the jail letter the action moves to to the Children’s Crusade movement of May 1963 and the horrific response by that thug Eugene Conner. I didn’t previously know that he had lost the election as head of the city council the month before but had refused to acknowledge the loss. So not only was he a thug but an unelected thug at the time he ordered dogs and water cannon be used in attacking child protesters. Then in Sept 1963 is the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing that killed four little girls. The Church and the Park are both across the street from museum and cover three of the four corners of the intersection of 16th Street and 6th Avenue.
After the tour we went out into the park and walked around the walk of freedom enjoying the very pleasant even hot day. It got to 28C here and humidity made it feel warmer and the forecast rain never really materialized ( Hopefully tomorrow’s rain also holds off). The memorials for the four girls at the Church and at the park across from the museum were both very moving. The memorial in the park also remembers the two young boys killed on the same day. The empty shoes and bare feet on the statues of the girls certainly were very moving.
The museum took more than 3 hours to see so it was after 4pm when we got back in the car and headed south towards the RV park. We needed to grocery shop as the trailer was fairly low on food. Lorraine and I did the usual back and forth on what to do next? Go grocery shop? Go for a Late Lunch/Early Dinner? Just go back to the trailer and eat leftovers?
“What do you want to do?”
“Well what do you want do?”
“No, I asked you first.”
“No, I asked you first.”
“No, you’re driving you decide.”...
In the end my appetite decided — I was way too hungry to grocery shop sanely ( we hadn’t had lunch at all) so I decided to go back to the BBQ restaurant that I got take-out from the night before — Jim N’ Nicks BBQ. This is a small chain of BBQ places and they tick all the boxes. They have take-out, drive-through, a good bar, good biscuits and the smell of wood and cooking pork can kill you if you are hungry. We ordered margaritas and devilled eggs ( Both excellent) while we decided on our mains. Lorraine had a steak with beans and Mac and cheese while I had a 2 meat combo ( because I couldn’t decide — at least I didn’t have 3 meats...) Smoked Sausage Links and Carolina Pulled Pork ( because I missed pulled pork while we were in Santee). Lorraine’s steak was wonderfully smoky and nicely rare. My combo was gigantic — 3 sausage links and about 6oz of perfectly balanced pulled pork. The pork was smoky, moist and rich with a perfect hit of vinegar and chilli. This means that we’ve still got a half steak and two sausage links ( and they are full sized) for breakfast or lunch tomorrow with the sides and leftover pork from last night. We got two banana puddings to go — and I’m not sure we’ll have room for them even now at 9:30... Maybe we’ll split one...
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