Tuskegee and Montgomery

Sunday was cold and windy, but the sun was out so we decided to head to Tuskegee, AL to visit the Tuskegee Institute and Booker T. Washington's house, the Oaks and the Tuskegee Airmen's Molton Field.   When we got to the Institute, the guard told us that the college was on spring break, so we would not be able to visit the Historic area nor the Oaks.   That left the airfield, but the guard wasn't too clear on where it was.   Hmmm somewhere near I-85.   Luckily there was a brown historic marker as we headed toward I-85, and so we found the field.

Jack at Molton Field

Jack in a Link Trainer

In front of a training plane

In front of the "Tea Room"

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black fighter pilots in WWII; if you saw the movie, Red Tails, you learned quite a bit about the history of this group.   We were able to visit the hangar and saw the planes the offices, and the interactive material told us about the work of the civilians, the students, the flight instructors, and the army support personnel.   It was really interesting, and much more than we anticipated we'd see.   The exciting news was that they are working on Hangar 2, which will contain a theater of films on the pilots, and more interactive stations.

Monday found us in Montgomery visiting the Civil Rights Memorial Center which remembers the 40 martyrs killed during the fight for voting rights in Alabama.   After seeing the pictures and hearing the stories of these heroes, we progressed down the hall reminding us of all the areas of the world that are denying people their Civil Rights, and ends at Wall of Tolerance where visitors have the opportunity to pledge to protect and speak up for civil rights when confronted by issues.   Outside a circular black granite table records the names of the martyrs and chronicles the history of the Civil Rights Movement.

We walked to the First Confederate White house and toured the home of Jefferson Davis during the first three months of his presidency and then  walked across the street to the capitol to the Senate chamber where the states voted to leave the union and form the Confederacy.

Tuesday was our last day of touring in Montgomery, and we traced the Civil Rights Movement from the bus boycott and the parsonage of Martin Luther King Jr. to the Voting Rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.   The 54 day march from Selma to Montgomery culminated a journey of a hundred years by African Americans to gain one of the most fundamental of American freedoms:  THE RIGHT TO VOTE!  Several attempts were made to march, with police stopping 3 of the attempts with dogs, fire hoses, cattle prods and bats as well as guns.   Finally the President sent National Guardsmen to protect the marchers who started out from Selma and walked for four days, camping in tent cities at night, and finally arriving in Montgomery....25,000 marchers walked up Dexter Street to the state capitol building.   The march occurred in March of 1965,  and on August 6, 1965 President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which suspended literacy tests, appointed federal election monitors, and challenged the use of poll taxes.  We walked to the top of the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, the site of the bloodshed and visited the National Park Interpretive Center.