Montgomery: Past & Future

Montgomery is a city on the move. Birmingham is still the largest city in Alabama but it has been bleeding people for a while now and has only a few thousand more people than Montgomery, which has been gaining population. (Birmingham has a much larger metro area, though.)

Downtown Montgomery is a nice mix of buildings old and new. Of course I was interesting in the former. Like these.







A couple things stood out to me as we wandered around on Saturday morning. The first is that, for a city whose history in wrapped up in buses, I didn't see any. In fact, I didn't see a single one the whole time we were there. Not downtown, the north side, nor the south side. Very weird. Secondly, downtown was pretty empty. There were cars parked everywhere but the streets could have been used to shoot a post-apocalypse movie. I had hoped it was because it was 95 fucking degrees out and everyone was proving to be sane by remaining in air conditioned luxury but The D's dad, Henry, said that it's usually dead on Saturday mornings. However podunk Madison may be, at least our downtown has people milling about on Saturday mornings, farmers market or not.

The D, Henry, and I went for a walk early in the morning while the kids were still asleep. We headed down to Riverfront Park. The Alabama River winds through town and was how lots of stuff got shipped back in the 19th century. Unfortunately we neglected to bring a camera and, when I went back later to get some snaps, the riverfront was closed due to a private party being held there.

A riverboat was docked at the waterfront. You can grab a ride on the Harriott II and have dinner as you cruise down the Alabama River. There was also a band shell on the shore and the Montgomery Biscuits' stadium, a AA minor league baseball team, was just up the hill. The old train station was also there.





I'm not sure when the last train stopped there but I do know that Amtrak stopped servicing Montgomery in 1995. A sign at the park noted that steamboats would dock here and unload cotton. Henry added that they also unloaded slaves. There was a tunnel that ran from the shore, underneath the railroad tracks, and up to Commerce Street. It was odd to think that I was walking where slaves once did. I was just a tourist but they headed up to what is now Court Square to be auctioned off.





Once the kids were awake and fed, we all went over to the Rosa Parks Museum. We passed by Court Square where slaves were sold. Today it's a nice area with a large fountain.





If you ever find yourself near Montgomery, do go to the Rosa Parks Museum even if you hate touristy things. It is well worth it. No cameras were allowed but I think the sign stopped no one but us.

You start by entering a big room with three large video screens mounted on the walls up by the ceiling. A video prologue plays which gives you some background on the city at the time and ends with the narrator intoning something like "…until that fate day in December." Then the lights come back on, a door opens on the far wall, and you're ushered into the next room.

Here a replica of a bus from c.1955 is along one wall. The windows have been replaced by video monitors and the incident from 1 December 1955 is reenacted. Rosa Parks gets on the bus and more passengers board at subsequent stops. Then the bus is full and finally the moment arrives. Bus driver James Blake tells Parks to move to the back but she won't budge. He calls the dispatcher and the police eventually arrive to take Parks to jail. It was a really neat and immersive display.

When it finishes, you wander into the other rooms which have lots of enlarged photos and descriptions of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which followed Parks' arrest. The bus system lost lots of money as blacks carpooled and rode in taxis operated by fellow blacks. Displays chronicled the activities in Montgomery but also the legal fight that led to the decision in Browder v. Gayle which ended the discrimination on the city's buses. And of course there was plenty about how all of this became part of the larger civil rights struggle led by Martin Luther King.

It was a very intense place. While 21st century certainly isn't perfect, it is rather amazing to, in a sense, get up close and personal with segregation (at least of the legal kind) - something that seems so distant yet is very recent. Sure, it was 50+ years ago but some of The D's family I had met the night before had lived it. The experience proved to be a bit too moving for The D who was brought to tears.

To compound the whole sense of being surrounded by history, I walked outside after the tour only to realize that the incident on that bus happened on the street right there before me. It was an awe-inspiring feeling. I haven't asked but wonder how much the kids know about Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement. Kids being kids, they seemed to have only a modicum of interest in Montgomery's history. It's to be expected when cable TV and junk food are just down the street. If Jim Crow laws and the whole struggle are foreign enough to The D and me because of our ages and the fact that we're denizens of the Upper Midwest, then it must be positively ancient history millions of miles away to the kids. I wonder how much Civil Rights history they've learned at school…

The D remarked that Montgomery had changed a lot since she was last there. Henry said that the city fathers specifically went out to change the city to keep its young people there. This was exemplified by The Alley, what looked to be an old warehouse that was converted into an entertainment mall featuring bars and restaurants with lots of outdoor seating. One restaurant there seemed to capture what I perceived to be going on in Montgomery: change to keep up with the times but at a typical Southern pace.

I can't recall the place's name, but it was a casual joint where you could grab a burger or a healthier wrap along with a cool drink and ice cream. They had a small but respectable selection of microbrews including Sam Adams (I was surprised to see it featured here as well as the Memphis airport. Who knew it was so big in the South?), Magic Hat, and Atlanta's Sweetwater. But it is the only restaurant I've been to where the number of clerks taking orders and manning cash registers was inversely proportional to the number of customers waiting in line. As soon as there were six patrons looking to place an order, the second register was abandoned. But that's the South for you. Things get done but at their own pace.