Selma to Montgomery

Clanton Peach Watertower

Our RV Campground is in Clanton - love the giant peach!

Selma

Okay we just get into town and immediately see this sign... Right Bob Myers, wrong insurance company?  Wrong Bob Myers, right insurance company?  Hmmm, neither?... did make us take a second look!

Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church

This was the site of early meetings in the 1960s voting rights campaign.  It was also the staging point of the walk from Selma to Montgomery.  Do you know why churches played an important part in the Civil Rights Movement?  It was the only place that blacks could legally gather in a large group.

King Monument sits in front of church.

George Washington Carver Homes

Many participants in the Selma marches lived in this large housing complex across the street from Brown Chapel.  Marchers and civil rights workers from out of town were lodged here.

Edmund Pettus Bridge

Scott and I walked across the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge that has become a symbol of the first attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery.  On March 7, Bloody Sunday, marchers crossed the bridge only to be beaten back by state troopers blocking the road.  March 9, 1965, Turnaround Tuesday, marchers pray on the bridge and then return to Selma without conflict.  Finally on March 21-25, 4,000 marchers leave Selma under the protection of 1,900 nationalized Alabama national guardsmen and another 2,000 soldiers, and dozens of FBI agents and federal marshals. 

Road from Selma to Montgomery 

Most of the core group marched all 54 miles, stopping at four overnight campsites.

Viola Liuzzo, a Detroit housewife, was shot when Klansmen sped alongside her car as she returned marchers to Selma.  

Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery

By the time marchers reached the Alabama State Capitol, their numbers had swelled to 25,000 and the march had given meaning to the 15th Amendment:  "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church

This church was the staging area for the rally on Montgomery at the end of the march from Selma.  It was already a Civil Rights landmark; Dr. King was the new pastor of the church when they formed the Montgomery Improvement Association in response to the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man.  They asked Dr. King to head the group and his church became the headquarters for the successful 1955-56 boycott of the Montgomery bus system.

Civil Rights Memorial

The Civil Rights Memorial by Maya Lin honors the achievements and memory of those who died during the Civil Rights Movement, a period framed by Brown vs the Board of Education decision in 1954 and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.

Rosa Parks Library and Museum

Mural of Rosa Parks in lobby of museum.

During the boycott churches arranged pick up sites and station wagons to transport blacks in Montgomery.  No more than four passengers could be in any one vehicle at a time.  The boycott lasted from December 5, 1955, the day of Parks trial, until December 20, 1956 when the US Supreme Court declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional. 

First White House of the Confederacy 

Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and his family lived here until the Capitol was moved to Richmond.

Fitzgerald House

F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda and daughter Scottie lived in this house from October 1931 until April 1932.  During that time Fitzgerald worked on his novel, Tender is the Night, and Zelda wrote her only novel, Save Me the Waltz.