Alabama - Florida

Monday we headed out to the Freedom Riders National Monument, in Anniston, Alabama

There was an actual gas lantern on the wall in the alleyway!

The brown building was the Greyhound station and the alleyway was where the bus pulled in to load up passengers. The bus was full of black and white passengers, attempting to test the segregation laws on a bus ride to New Orleans. A mob blocked the alleyway, beat on the bus with clubs and pipes, slashed the tires before it was allowed to leave.

The bus only made it a few miles with some cars in front of it, forcing the bus to go slowly, before the tires deflated and the bus had to stop. The mob surrounded the bus, threw flaming rags in a broken window, and only when a fuel tank exploded and forced the mob back were the passengers able to escape the bus.

Anniston is full of Civil Rights sites and there's a walking tour you can do.

We headed for Horseshoe Bend National Military Park next

It was the site of a war between bands of Creeks during the same time period at the War of 1812. The U.S. was worried that one band , the Red Sticks, would side with the British and help them, so they sided with the other band and helped win the war. This part of the river is where over 300 Red Sticks were killed trying to escape.

This was the site of their village, over 300 women and children were taken captive and the village was burned

The white posts are where the Red Sticks formed a barricade to fight behind. The river forms a horseshoe and you have to cross it to get to where their village is. A Creek on the U.S. side found a canoe and got over there and set the village on fire. That's when Andrew Jackson, in his first real military foray, charged the barricade and many of the Red Sticks fled.

Because of his success at this battle, Andrew Jackson then went to New Orleans and helped win the Battle of New Orleans which helped set him on the path to presidency.

Tuesday we went to Birmingham. We saw the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the park nearby with sculptures about the Civil Rights movement

4 girls, ages 14 and 11, were killed when a bomb went off in a stairwell outside the church in 1963

There were a half dozen sculptures or memorials in the park, pretty sobering. All of this is across the street from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, an amazing museum which I've been to before but we didn't go into

That evening we went to the Birmingham temple

Wednesday we headed to Montgomery and saw the First White House of the Confederacy

I was super impressed by this gown in display in one of the rooms upstairs. It was all furnished according to time period, original pieces but not necessarily all pieces used or owned by Jefferson Davis

The state capitol is right across the street and has all the state flags lining the drive.

Another beautiful capitol dome

I did not realize that the Southern states met in this building to declare their independence and form the Confederacy

The carpets were pretty wild!

These were two original chairs used in the room that had a perforated design to allow for ventilation

We stopped by the site where Rosa Parks was arrested

We briefly went in to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (there is a memorial AND a museum) to see this exhibit:

There was more to see outside commemorating those who have been lynched, plus the museum exhibits are all about lynching.  The jars are full of dirt from locations where people have been lynched starting in 1877

And ending in 1947, only representing lynchings in Alabama.  Very sobering.

Our next stop was to visit the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site

The actual hangars still exist and the airfield is still used today. The hangars are now the museums

We learned that for every airman in the air, there were 10 people on the ground supporting them. The film in the museum was SO good that the entire crowd--mostly a field trip of high schoolers--clapped at the end

Thursday we headed back to Tuskegee University

We went to the George Washington Carver Museum

And toured Booker T. Washington's home, both buildings are located on the Tuskegee University campus but owned by the National Park Service.

Then we headed out, driving the route from Montgomery to Selma, following the path taken by those who walked the Selma to Montgomery route and we stoped at Lowndes Interpretive Center which was SO well done

The march happened twice--the first time was Bloody Sunday when they made it all the way over the bridge only to be attacked and tear gassed. The second time they actually made it to the Montgomery capitol to voice their protests to the governor

The gate at the Lowndes Interpretive Center had the archway of the bridge, the capitol building, and the tent city that sprung up in the Lowndes area because many of those protesting were thrown off their land by their white landowners

There is much to see in Selma, including a National Voting Rights museum, which we didn't see. We were there to see the Selma Interpretive Center (mostly an info center)

And to see the Edmund Pettus Bridge and walk over it

We also drove by the church, Brown Chapel AME Church, which was where the protesters had started from. We had learned in the past few days that churches played such a huge part in the Civil Rights movement because they were the one place where the people could meet and assemble without fear of the law

Friday we went to the site of the Monroe County Courthouse, now a museum.  It is famous because this is the town that Harper Lee (and her friend, Truman Capote, who inspired the character of Dill) grew up in and this building is the one she modeled her version of the courthouse after in To Kill the Mockingbird

The inside of the courtroom

Seen from the judge's seat

And seen from the gallery where Scout would have been to watch the trial unfold

We went to the cemetery to pay our respects

Harper Lee's real first name is Nelle, she is buried in a plot with her father, mother, and sister to the right of her plot.

Not far from Monroeville we crossed into Florida!

Our next stop was to try Gulf Islands National Seashore again, since we got disappointed by our visit to the Davis Bayou in Mississippi.  This was the Naval Live Oak unit, there are a LOT of units of the Gulf Islands National Seashore but only a few visitor centers

There's no such thing as a "naval live oak" but these trees were set aside as a federal tree farm to use for building war ships

They had an exhibit where you could hoist 3 different blocks of wood, one was yellow pine, one was white oak, one was live oak

The live oak was HEAVY!

We walked out to the beach and saw this heron up close, he was only about a dozen feet away

Played in the water a little bit

We were headed to Tallahassee and were almost there when a car pulled up next to us, honking. They shouted, "Your car is sparking!!" We had run over a tire tread a ways back and it was wrapped around the tow dolly.  The metal in the tire tread was sparking on the road, right under the driver side of the car.  It came off easily, never a dull moment driving this rig!

Saturday was a quiet day, we found ourselves a campsite in the Tallahassee area and enjoyed some down time. We got an "extra" with our campsite: a frog in the utilities box!

Today we attended the Crawfordville Ward, Tallahassee Florida Stake

We headed down the road in the afternoon and saw the St. Marks Lighthouse in the wildlife refuge and saw LOTS of birds!