Civil Rights Trip: Photo and Video Footage

This video features photos and video footage from our civil rights trip. We dedicate this blog and this video to all of the Foot Soldiers whose names are often forgotten, but played a huge role by participating in the Civil Rights Movement.

Atlanta: Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

Jensen Roll:

This was a very well put together site in my opinion. Seeing the wagon that Dr. King was carried in was very nice to see and then seeing his burial site with his wife was also very powerful and moving. I also loved seeing so many people there at the site compared to all of the other places we had been. It was very important to me to see parents with young children teaching them about the movement. There are many people my age who still have no clue how important this movement has been in our history as a nation and in human growth.

Being in the old Ebenezer Church was amazing. They had old recordings of MLK’s sermons that they were replaying. If you closed your eyes it was just like being there when he preached there years ago. The sanctuary looked as if congregations still met there each week.

Cassidy Stratton: 

This was not my first time visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, but I did have a completely different experience that my prior visit. I have always admired Dr. King’s leadership throughout the Civil Rights Movement, however, this visit was different because of my new appreciation for Coretta Scott King. It was not until this trip that I learned (in detail) her extreme contributions to the movement. She was dedicated to helping people and most definitely one of her husband’s #1 supporters. I now look up to both of them. Although they were a unit (husband and wife), I now understand their individual efforts in regards to the movement.

One of the exhibits in the memorial really hit home for me because it included all of the places that he visited and helped fight for civil rights, and Chicago was one of the places listed. I have heard numerous stories from my family about Dr. King’s impact on Chicago, but it was not until I actually saw the city engraved on the ground that I understood that he made a difference there. I am extremely appreciative.

My feet near the Chicago, IL engraving.

Hannah Orth:

Graves of Dr. King and Coretta Scott King.

We went outside to the crypt of Dr. King and Coretta, which was my favorite part of the center.  The idea to place them floating on top of the water has such a biblical and symbolic meaning.  Jesus walked on water, and Coretta and Dr. King are floating there similarly to Jesus.  The blueness of the water and the whiteness of the crypt provided such a dramatic feeling when I first saw them. I was taken aback by how much seeing their memorial shocked me.  The eternal flame across from their crypt gave me chills as well.  I think the flame should be somewhere more dramatic.  I think it seems like an afterthought; however, I still felt so empowered standing there.  The most magical moment of the trip was watching a dad wrap his young son in his arms and explain the eternal flame.  I nearly cried at passing of knowledge, history, culture, and love in this one innocent moment.  I wanted to take a picture, but this was their moment and I did not want to have a piece of it; it seemed selfish.

I can affirmatively say that my life is different because of this trip.  Now, I trust love to conquer all the worst parts of the world.  I believed in the power of love before but not like this, not with this much conviction.

The thousands of people in this movement inspire me.  The movement is associated with Dr. King and Rosa Parks and thousands of others are never mentioned.  Those are the foot soldiers that pushed the movement to the level it needed to be.  I can only hope to inspire a few people, let alone a whole population.  I am not sure where my future will go, but regardless, this trip has changed me for the better.  Thank you.

 

Montgomery: Dexter Church Parsonage and Home to Dr. King

Image of Dr. King’s home in Montgomery.

This was perhaps the best tour we had on the trip. Shirley Cherry was our tour guide for seeing the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church parsonage. She was a retired schoolteacher who had more energy and information than all of us combined.  Her knowledge of the movement was often firsthand and if not firsthand, than a very close secondhand. She told us about meeting the Mr. Peters, the man who arrested Rosa Parks. He actually came to the house and got a tour.

Before Dr. King came to Dexter, the church had been pastored by Rev. Vernon John. It was he who really got the community ready to bring in someone like Dr. King. He often preached on the future blacks needed to strive for and what was in their way to get there. Some say that Vernon John was to Dr. King like John the Baptist was to Jesus.-class black church. At the time churches were one of the only institutions that blacks could own and they were often owned by upper-class blacks. Dexter Church owned the house (309 Jackson Street) that Dr. King lived in while he pastored the church. The house is located on Centennial Hill, a middle class black neighborhood. Down the street in the biggest house on the block lived Vera Harris, who helped to house many of the freedom riders.

Before going into the King’s old house we saw the place where a bomb had left a hole in the porch. Upon entering the house it was like going back in time. Many of the things in the house were original and it was very easy, with the help of Shirley to envision everything that took place in the house. We got to see where the family would eat, sleep, host guests, and many other things. In the dining room there was a keyboard where we reflected on Dr. Kings statement, “There are no gradations in the image of God.  Every man from a treble white to a bass black are significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because everyone is made in the image of God.”

We also spent a long time in the kitchen where Dr. King sat at the kitchen table late one night and contemplated God’s calling for his life. In this moment he found that he need not fear anything of this world and that God had plans for him. I can remember feeling how easy it was to relate to those same fears he expressed and the comfort that God can be in those moments. It was very moving to hear about Dr. King sending home artificial flowers to his wife. For her this was out of the ordinary. Her husband usually sent real flowers, so she called and asked why the change. He answered by saying that he wanted her to have something that would always be there, as if he knew he would soon be killed.

Birmingham: Kelly Ingram Park

Entrance to Kelly Ingram Park

Kelly Ingram Park is named after a white Birmingham firefighter who was the first Navy sailor to die in World War I.  City officials have debated changing the name to honor the Civil Rights leaders of the area, but decided to keep the name because of the events that happened there.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had come down to Birmingham to find a victory because of the unsuccessful demonstrations that he had organized further north.  Dr. King was arrested and in response to a newspaper column, wrote A Letter From Birmingham Jail.  His arrest led to news reporters coming to Birmingham which was a tactic placed by MLK and Shuttlesworth to highlight the upcoming events.  Dr. King decided that involving the children of Birmingham would be the best idea to prevent the adults from losing their jobs or houses.  On May 2^nd, 1963, the children of Birmingham decided to march through Kelly Ingram Park.

At a certain time during the school day, these children left school while the teachers pretended not to notice.  Dorothy Cotton and James Bevel led the children that day throughout the march.  In the words of several Civil Rights experts, Eugene “Bull” Connor “set the movement on fire.”  Bull Connor was a brutal police chief who terrorized the black population of Birmingham.  That day, May 2^nd, Bull Connor sent policemen with aggressive dogs into the marchers and sprayed them with water hoses; both of which are reflected in sculptures throughout the park.  These actions were broadcast on national television; the world saw children and teenagers being attacked by dogs and sprayed by water hoses. Injured children were rushed to the 16^th Street Baptist Church until the black ambulances; the hearses came to pick them up.

The park serves as a reconciliation gesture from the town of Birmingham to those treated horrifically during and before the movement.  The park portrays various events of Birmingham like the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing that took the lives of four little girls.  The statue honoring these girls faces and is diagonal from the church.

Statue of two children getting hit by water hose.

Further on the right side of the park, there is a statue of a policeman holding a protestor by his collar while a dog nips at his legs

The other part of the four pools center

In the center of four pools, a circle repeating the words “Revolution” and “Reconciliation” is etched in the stone

Statue honoring the four little girls who were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church

The last statue has prison bars on one side of the sidewalk and two individuals on the other that align to show them behind bars. Etched below them is the quote, “I ain’t afraid of your jail.”