My
brother Don and I recently returned from our fourth annual baseball trip. We are now two-thirds of the way to our goal
of seeing regular season games in all the major league baseball fields. This year we finished up the Eastern
Divisions by going South to Atlanta, Miami and Tampa Bay. We also caught up
with our favorite college team, Virginia, playing Florida State in
Tallahassee. That was a bonus.
Years ago we started adding some
cultural activities to our trips, like The Martin Luther King Memorial on a
prior football trip to Atlanta, The Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati,
and the Museum of African American History in Detroit. We also visited the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in Cleveland, Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Louis Armstrong’s
home in Queens, and the Chicago Blues Festival in Grant Park that we just
lucked into.
This year we planned to go to
Alabama between baseball games and fill in some more of our Civil Rights
Education. It was a wonderful
experience: educational, emotional, and extremely humbling. I hadn’t really put
it into historical perspective until the past week when I realized that
Saturday was the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Brown v Board of Education case, and this summer is the fiftieth
anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Leaving Miami, we drove to
Montgomery, the primary objective being the Civil Rights Memorial Center,
sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It was the perfect place to begin, with its video presentation and
fountain focusing on the martyrs of the movement. Then we moved from that tear inducing Theater presentation, into
the room with the Wall of Tolerance.
Here visitors are invited to add their names to the thousands who have
pledged here to work in their daily lives for justice, equality and human
rights – the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement. Don and I both did so without hesitation.
From there, we walked across the
street and down the walkway to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.
Sitting almost in the shadow of the Alabama State Capitol building, this is the
only church that Martin Luther King, Jr. actually pastored on his own,
according to our amazing guide, Rev, Richard Smith, who is Associate Minister
there now. This is where King was when Rosa Parks took her defiant seat that
led to the 381-day bus boycott that became the Lexington and Concord of the
movement. And not insignificantly, it vaulted into national prominence the
young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Rev. Smith walked us through a wonderful mural in the basement of the
church that depicts the movement from Rosa Parks in 1955, through the
assassination of Dr. King in 1968. This 10 by 47 foot mural was painted in 1980
by John W. Feagin, an artist and a Dexter Deacon. It was from his office, near this spot on the lower level, that
Dr. King directed the bus boycott.
From Rev. Smith we learned about a
lot more. When we told him that we were
planning on moving up to Birmingham the next day, he filled us in on that
city’s unhappy contributions to the turbulent times. Probably most distressing was the bombing in the Sunday School at
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and injuring many
more parishioners. Birmingham was also
the site of vicious attacks by police and dogs on peaceful protestors. But from
its jail cell, Rev. King wrote the letter that is the blueprint for ultimate
victory of non-violent resistance over tyranny and brutality.
We found Birmingham to be up to its
billing, steeped in the history of the movement, and now making peace with its
past. The Kelly Ingram Park, scene of
some of the most brutal attacks, has become a park dedicated to Peace, with
sculpture and commemorative markers inviting visitors to contemplate, remember,
and dedicate themselves, as at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, to a
peaceful, respectful future. The
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, now beautifully rebuilt, has a section near
where the bombs exploded, set aside for quiet reflection and remembrance. The
Sanctuary has a stained glass window, a gift from the people of Wales after the
bombing, of Jesus on the cross with the words, “You do it unto me.” The Civil Rights Institute, across the
street from the Church, has a comprehensive Museum, including parts of the cell
in which Dr. King wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Don and I talked about the reason we
feel such a strong desire to relive this history, wherever we find it. Both of us wish we had participated in some
substantive way. But we just did not
know at the time, or we were too young to feel that we could make a difference.
I think we feel guilt, even though we never intentionally hurt anyone or
witnessed any racial violence or oppression. We were born and raised in Virginia,
a Southern State, but none of these things went on around our hometown of
Salem. I wonder if the guilt we feel is similar to what the German people feel
when they visit a Concentration Camp or the Holocaust Museum: “I didn’t do it, but I didn’t do anything to
prevent it either.”
Since
I was raised in the mid-twentieth century South, attended schools there and
soaked up its culture, I have thought there are many ways in which the South is
more racially integrated than the North.
People of both races shared the poverty and economic powerlessness,
which followed the Civil War through the reconstruction period. There is a close cultural kinship between
the races, which is expressed largely through music and religion. However, Brown
v. Board of Education took at least ten years to find its way into the
Roanoke Valley of Virginia, and as a consequence I never attended any
elementary or secondary schools with people of African heritage. It was while I was a student at the
University of Virginia that I first came to understand the urgency of Martin
Luther King’s campaign for the rights of black Americans. The Council on Human
Relations at the University sponsored two lectures on the subject: first, Dr.
King and then, in stark contrast thereto, George Lincoln Rockwell, who was then
head of the American Nazi Party. Ever
since that experience, I have been a strong advocate of freedom of speech and
the free marketplace of ideas: until I heard Rockwell, I did not know the
extent to which the civil rights movement needed to be. It wasn’t difficult to choose sides after
that.
Now I have an even greater understanding, because of my trips to
the various Civil Rights Memorial venues.
I get choked up when I see pictures of the little bombing victims in
Birmingham, one of whom was named Addie, our mother’s name, and the shortened
version of my granddaughter’s. The
Civil Rights martyrs are more real to me now, and their sacrifices more
obviously precious. And I will speak
out in opposition to losing ground in making America live up to its creed, even
when - ESPECIALLY When - it’s the current Supreme Court letting the clock roll
back on voting rights and affirmative action.
We can do better, because we have done better. I would love to see the name of Antonin Scalia on the SPLC Wall
of Tolerance. If some of the members of
our highest court are not committed to justice, equality and human rights, it
isn’t the first time in our history (e.g. Taney and the Dred Scott decision;
Plessy v. Ferguson; Korematsu). But it
is most definitely a path in the wrong direction and a further injury to the
incredibly brave people who have lived and died for these principles.
The baseball trip was great! Each of the Major League Home Teams won,
either breaking a tie or coming from behind in the last inning to send their
faithful fans home happy. Better yet,
the one home team that did not win was Florida State, losing in the 10th
inning to nationally ranked number one – Virginia. So a big Wahoo Wa was exchanged by the fifty to one hundred
Virginia fans in Dick Howser Stadium on the Florida State Campus. And I think the fact that my car battery was
dead when we got back to the parking lot was probably a coincidence.
I feel that my soul has been
expanded by this experience, beyond even my great expectations. When we get out to Texas and Arizona next
year, I don’t know what we may find that might be similarly inspiring. But whether we just luck into it, or have to
drive a couple days out of the way to find it, it will definitely be worth it.
Dennis Clower
May, 2014
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