As stunning and moving as the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice were, Montgomery offered more to see.

We visited: the Rosa Parks Museum, the Civil Rights Memorial of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dexter AME where Rev. Martin Luther King preached, plus our hotel was not far from the site of the waterfront Montgomery River Brawl.

The Rosa Parks Museum was about to close when we got there, but since it was small and the front desk clerk was gracious, we dashed in. It houses the actual bus where Rosa Parks famously sat up front and refused to move to the rear. There is also a lot of documentary and photographic ephemera associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

By this hour, my brain was a little fried, but one indelible fact popped — how supporters used vehicles like hearses or commercial vans to secretly transport protestors, many of whom had 90-minute (or longer) walks to get home after a long day of menial labor.

Why? To avoid violence of course.

This strategy reminded me of the folks trying to leave Florida during the Great Migration as described by Isabel Wilkerson.* Because white “employers” would exert undue pressure or worse to keep their cheap, indentured workforce, Black Floridians had to secretly or slowly sell their belongings and then depart surreptitiously. One person had themselves nailed into a coffin to avoid detection.

Earlier that day, we went to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial. You might have laughed at us circling the block a few times trying to locate the building. Around and around we went.

Unfortunately that famous and beautiful granite water feature out front was dry for repairs, but the inside, though small, did not disappoint.

You entered into a cavernous space papered with historic photos. Then a sound track started while lights illuminated relevant photos.

That table you see was dedicated to “the Martyrs.”

Next, in an auditorium a film about civil rights played, covering much of what we’d been seeing but also addressing George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the end, a darkened room offered memorial-goers an opportunity to add their names to a scrolling visual display of supporters. It was one of those clever interactive exhibits that pulls people in and lets them feel part of something. Or at least, it did me.

There was no place to make a donation there, which I kind of expected, but since I’ve been a card-carrying member of the SPLC since 1990, I didn’t feel too bad.

Charles M. Blow: many Black people, in particular, saw it [the violent tussles] as an unfortunate but practically unavoidable response to what can feel like an unending stream of incidents in which Black people are publicly victimized, with no one willing or able to intervene or render aid.

Here’s a link to his oped with the paywall removed: New York Times Opinion.

And here’s a screen shot from Rolling Stone:

Rolling Stone link.

Anyway, I’m surprised that no one thought to artfully position a folding chair next to this statue of Rosa Parks, just blocks from the waterfront.

* The Warmth of Other Suns, the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson.