Today's Parks

Sorry for the blah title, but I can't really think of a title fitting for this blog.  I know we are vacation, but so far it has been a pretty dark, heavy vacation with all the Civil Rights sites we've been to.  I'm starting to realize that what I learned in school about the Civil Rights Movement is just the tip of the iceberg.  I remember learning that it was a violent time in our history, but I guess the public education I had really kept a lot of that out of the history lessons.  While the sites have been pretty sad so far on our trip, I'm so grateful to learn and that we are honoring those that moved mountains to achieve equality.

We started today at Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Site.  While this site wasn't so much about the Civil Rights Movement, it did touch on it a bit (I'll get to that).  This site honors the African-Americans who were pilots and airmen during World War II.  They had an impressive statistic in that no bomber they were escorting was shot down by enemy fighters.  The museum has a few planes and talks about the training that happened at the airfield.  The end of the exhibit was where the racist tendencies were explained.  It is such a shame that these men were heroes during WWII and were treated like crap afterwards.  It's like their accomplishments and the fact that they risked their lives for their country (that hated them) didn't even matter.

Hangar 1 and the air field

P-51 Mustang

Our next stop was to Tuskegee Institute National Historical Site.  This was an interesting site since it is the only site in the National Park Service to be on the campus of an operating university.  The NPS only owns two buildings:  Booker T. Washington's house (who served as the first president of the university) and the George Washington Carver museum.  We went through the museum to learn all about Carver's accomplishments studying plants.  We even picked up a couple of his works in the gift shop on how to grow peanuts and tomatoes!  Here's hoping we get good information for next year's garden!  :-)  After the museum, we caught the tour of Booker T. Washington's house which was really pretty inside.  Apparently Booker was not shy about asking for money, so there were mumblings around town when he built the pretty large house on campus.  Booker justified the extravagant home by saying he wanted the university to feel prestigious.  A cool fact about the house is that the students at the university made the bricks for the house (and other buildings on campus), laid the bricks, and did most of the wood work in the house too.  After the tour, we went to the cemetery on campus to see the final resting place of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.

Booker T. Washington's home 

Booker's desk and chair that were gifts to him

George Washington Carver's grave

Booker T. Washington's grave

Our last park of the day was actually two stops on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.  This trail has different points of interest that happened while protesters were marching from Selma to Montgomery to demand their right to vote.  We actually were coming from Montgomery so we did this a little backwards.  We stopped at the visitor center in Lowdnes County first, which is the main visitor center for the trail.  We walked through the museum and learned all about the timeline of the events that took place during this march.  The most notable event is probably "Bloody Sunday" where peaceful protesters started to march in Selma and they got to the Pettus Bridge where they saw a "sea of blue" - cops who were ordered by their sheriff to not let the protesters cross the bridge.  The protesters were met with violence in the form of tear gas, night sticks, and other weapons.  I watched actual footage of this event at the museum and it was brutal.  None of the protesters were armed or even dressed in a way to protect themselves.  Even when the cops started getting violent, not a single protester fought back against the cops.  The second stop was to this bridge in Selma.  There are other stops on the trail, but those were the only two where we stopped.

Site of Bloody Sunday

Click on the picture to make it bigger for a summary of events.

When I go to National Park sites, I usually walk away with a sense of pride - feeling proud of what our country has been able to accomplish and preserve.  After these Civil Rights sites the last few days, I am proud of what African-Americans have achieved, but I can't help but walk away from these sites feeling sad that this is a real part of our history.  On our way back to the car after some of these sites, I keep telling Steve I just don't understand why there was so much violence and hatred for what should have been equal all along.  While I understand this is not a proud part of American history, these are National Park sites so we don't repeat history.

Ok, I'll stop with the heavy post now and end with the beer samplers we had today at Druid City and Black Warrior.  Black Warrior was far better and had many more options than Druid City.  The Scotch Ale at Black Warrior was delicious!

Druid City Brewing

Black Warrior Brewing