Deep South Trip Reflections

Sophie Wells

May, 2001

In Sudbury, in room 603 and the history lounge, I learned about the major dates, organizations, people, and events of the Civil Rights Movement. Video tapes of the sit-ins, Martin Luther King’s speeches, and Coming of Age in Mississippi helped me to understand what the movement was about and to have an idea of what happened; in my mind I had created a fragmented map. The trip down South filled in missing pieces of the map and gave it texture. Meeting people who had experienced the things I had only read about, visiting gravesites, and walking across bridges people had fought to walk across-- these experiences, intertwined with our encounters with modern day struggles for equality--filled me with sadness, anger, and hope.

On Monday morning, we drove to the Civil Rights Museum in the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot. The museum’s timelines and life-sized dioramas provided a base of Civil Rights History, reminding me of major movements, demonstrations, organizations, and legal battles. Our tour guide was different from most other tour guides I had seen; he was emotionally involved and captivating. His job was a way for him to continue the movement and to teach people about something for which he felt deeply, and he made the museum come to life. The last room of the museum was two preserved motel rooms MLK stayed in, one the day he was shot. It was eerie to be in such a legendary spot and to imagine being with him that morning, in his room with a half filled coffee cup, an open briefcase, and an unmade bed.

After stopping for lunch at Beale Street, where we learned that Southern service means a forty-five minute wait for a burger and french-fries, we headed to Graceland, home of Elvis, the “king” of Rock and Roll. Elvis was a pioneer in one of the most important cultural phenomenon of this century: Rock and Roll. He forged a path towards freedom of sexual expression and broke barriers of race and class. However, Graceland’s idolizing and commercializing took away from his genuine accomplishments. I did not care to see a museum of his cars or his personal jets or to admire each choice of his eccentric decorating skills throughout the decades. It upset me that Graceland added too heavy a layer of frosting to a cake that could have stood alone, and in doing so, took away from the flavor of the cake.

As we drove from Graceland to Clarksdale, I read in the paper that Mississippi was about to vote on the state flag. Unlike the old flag, the proposed new flag would have no confederate symbols. A new flag seemed the obvious choice, for the sake of Blacks and the entire population of Mississippi, so the state could move away from the racist tendencies of its past. However, a large group of locals did not want to give up the heritage, pride, or tradition associated with the state flag. One article mentioned a television ad in which a young boy in his attic opened up a trunk, held up his grandfather’s state flag from the war and asked, “Is this worth saving?” Is a nazi flag worth saving? Reading the newspaper, I realized how different the South and the North, especially the Northeast, are.

The next day, we woke up in the Mississippi Delta, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and headed for the Delta Blues Museum. The blues represent the black experience in the South, full of pain and suffering. What struck me most about this museum, and what I noticed about many of the civil rights museums that we visited, was its seemingly out of the way location. In contrast to most museums I have been to, these museums were discretely located, like hidden gems in what looked like poor neighborhoods.

We next journeyed to Hopson plantation, where we were able to see reconstructed tenant farmer structures. Walking around the plantation, I felt like I was in A Coming of Age in Mississippi. The houses had been changed slightly, given toilets, furniture, and refrigerators that the original owners would never have had. However, sitting on the porch of these one-room houses, and looking out on the vast fields, which were once filled with slaves and then with sharecroppers, I got goosebumps on my arms and legs. I could not imagine working all day on the fields in the intense heat, breaking my back, to return to a one-room house where I would sleep and awake the next day to continue my labor, all for hardly any pay. Being at the plantation, I appreciated where the energy for the civil rights movement came from.

Our next stop was Mound Bayou, which the locals pronounce Monn-Bye in their southern accents. Inside the city hall, we listened to the mayor, Milburn Crowe, speak to us about the history of the town. Mound Bayou was one of the first and last Black-owned towns in the Delta and is proof, for those who need it, that Blacks are perfectly capable of responsibility, leadership, and government. One of the most thought provoking things the mayor said was that there had never been segregation in the town because they were isolated from most of the surrounding areas. I wondered, and still do not know, which was better: isolation and self-government or integration and hardship. Again, we heard about the vote on the state flag, the result of which would be known that night.

After leaving Mound Bayou, we traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, where we met with Hollis Watkins, a freedom singer in the Civil Rights Movement. He told us about his experiences in the movement, the time he spent in jail and on death row, the people he met, the sacrifices he made, including relationships with family, and his promise to continue fighting until there was equality and justice. He now runs a group named Southern Outreach, which continues outreach into the community, inspires collaborative efforts with youth and people of all ages, and follows the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. He told us that he would not allow himself to get angry because to get angry was to show weakness and show your oppressor that he was in control. In order to overcome your oppressor, you cannot show him that he affects you. In the Civil Rights Movement they used songs to overcome their fear and their anger, and in doi ng so, overcome their oppressors. Hollis Watkins taught us songs from the movement, about not being afraid, not backing down, and wanting freedom. “I’m not afraid of your jails, cause I want my freedom, I want my freedom, I want my freedom…” We stood in a circle, singing and clapping, with him in the center, dancing around, and I felt a piece of what it was like to be in the movement. They used singing and group unity to overcome the beatings and the bigotry and to keep on fighting. What he shared with us was so powerful that I think each person in the room came out with a little piece of Hollis Watkins in him or her.

That night when we returned to our hotel rooms, we turned on our televisions in anticipation of the flag debate results. I was shocked to hear that Mississippi had decided, by a large majority, to save its old flag, knowing of its racist symbolism. To me, the vote represents widespread ignorance and indifference. It is a wake up call for Americans to become involved. It is easy to think that the Civil Rights Movement is over, that the Ku Klux Klan has calmed down, that segregation is illegal, and that Blacks have equal voting rights. In the North, we think we live as equals even though segregation is apparent in our towns, our school, and our classrooms. However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done, and this vote is a symbol of the progress we have yet to make. We should all be more like Hollis Watkins and dedicate our lives to making a difference.

After spending Wednesday in New Orleans, we traveled to Philadelphia Mississippi. We drove down the road on which Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were stopped and taken to be killed. At the local library, which we were told carried no copies of Catcher in the Rye, we met with the former editor of the town Newspaper, the Nashoba Democrat. He spoke slowly in a quiet voice and described what happened to the three civil rights workers, how brutally they were beaten, the complicated Klan involvement, the racism that pervaded the town at the time, and the corrupt local government. He said that there has not been a day that has passed when he did not think of the murder of the three young men; he is still trying to put together pieces of the puzzle. He was surprisingly progressive for a white man in the South in the ‘60s and even today; what impressed me most was his dedication to uncovering the truth and his willingness to risk his reputation and even his life because he knew what happened was wrong. When asked if he feared the Klan, he said no. “The Klansmen are cowards.” I was touched by his strength and ability to overcome such an oppressive environment.

Our next stop was James Chaney’s grave, in a clearing off of a dirt road where, like so many places, the history we had been studying was not yet history. A local man involved in the church talked to us at the grave, telling us about Chaney’s death, the burial, and how Chaney has not been able to rest in peace. There had been an eternal flame at the foot of the grave, but racist men had put it out. There was a small oval hole in the stone where Cheney’s picture had been because men had shot it out with rifles. A steel support had to keep the large headstone upright because, when the stone was too big to be pulled out of the ground by hand, men had knocked it over with their cars. This persisting aggression proves how horrible people can be and how cowardly they often are. I was appalled that acts as disgusting as these were still common today, when we assume we can rest because the major battles of civil rig hts have been won.

The next day, we drove to Selma, Alabama, to the Pettus Bridge. We walked across the bridge and I pictured thousands of marchers behind us. I could not even imagine the violence that took place there less than forty years ago. We think of our country as a model of freedom and justice, and yet people have been beaten for simply trying to organize. After crossing the bridge, we went to the Voting Rights Museum. This was one of the most inspiring and surprisingly emotional experiences on the trip. The director of the museum, a woman who was eleven years old at the time of the march, led us on a tour. In a room filled with plaster foot impressions of those who participated in the march, she told us about watching an old woman plowed down by a charging horse; the sound of the old woman’s head hitting the pavement was too loud for her to bear, and she fainted. She woke up to something dripping on her face, and whe n she looked up, she realized that it was her fourteen-year old sister’s blood. As she told this story, tears formed in my eyes. In the next room, she squeezed forty of us into a space smaller than a hundred square feet. We were so close that I could feel the people next to me breathing. This was the typical size, she said, of a jail cell that would fit forty-five people for weeks at a time, in which they were forced to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom together. It reminded me of things I had heard about the Holocaust, about shipping the Jews to Auschwitz in packed train cars. Again, tears rolled down my cheeks. This woman, who at eleven experienced something so moving, powerful, and painful, started this museum to share with us the frustration, sadness, and anger that consumed people throughout the Civil Rights Movement. Meeting people like her helps bring to life the characters and the emotions of the Civil Rights Movement. At the end of our tour, we listened to Reverend Reeves, the man who organized the march from Selma to Montgomery, speak to us about the march. Although it was inspiring to hear him speak because he had taken such a large part in the movement, I was more affected by the “foot soldiers” of the movement, whose stories are each unique but all filled with struggles and passion.

On Friday, we visited the memorial dedicated to those slain in the Civil Rights Movement. It was peaceful, solemn, beautiful, strong, and in constant motion. Although it was simple, it conveyed much of the importance and major qualities of the movement. I am glad that in the South there are so many memorials and museums to commemorate the Civil Rights Movement, its members, its accomplishments, and its goals; people need to be aware of its significance and importance. However, there should be memorials and museums like those we visited located all over the country, in Massachusetts, Chicago, California, Washington D.C., and New York, not just in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.

Our next stop was the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls were killed in the 1964 bombing. We sat in the church on the same day that less than a mile away, the jury was selected for the court case against a man accused of the bombing. It seemed that everywhere we went, we were presented with evidence of the continued fight for civil rights. Even though there are monuments and museums, the fight is not over; it continues, and as we traveled through the South, we became tangled in the continuing web of the struggle.

We crossed the Street from the church to the Birmingham Institute, a museum like the first one we had been to at the Lorraine Motel, filled with timelines and dioramas to help illustrate the struggles and impact of segregation, discrimination, and the movement against them. In a park next to the museum was a sculpture garden. One sculpture attempted to demonstrate the fear of being attacked by leaping police dogs, their teeth large and pointed, and their heads less than a foot away from whoever stood between them. I could not imagine the strength it took to confront the police attacks with their water hoses and leaping, biting dogs. This garden reminded me how courageous the people in the movement were.

In Atlanta, Nicole and I talked to a Mississippian who was staying in the same motel. He had talked to our bus driver, Mr. Crowl, and wanted to make sure that we did not come home with a distorted view of the South and that we did not think all Southern Whites were racists. He said, “Our (the Southerner’s) big problem now is poverty.” That made me think.  Although I had seen evidence of continuing racism, I had also noticed the striking poverty of the areas we had visited and traveled through. One of the most striking aspects of the South was its poverty. Less than five blocks away from the capital building in Mississippi stood two small houses that had obviously suffered serious fire damage, as evident from the burn marks and the condition of their roofs. Next door was a house boarded closed with a sheet of plywood.  The three houses were in no condition to live in, and yet there were people living there. The wealthy neighbors seemed not to notice. Many of the cities and towns we visited seemed poor or struggling. I think that racism and poverty are imposing problems the South has to deal with, but that neither issue should negate the impact of the other.

Our last stops were the King Memorial and museum and the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. In the morning, we attended the church service at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father had preached. Although it was interesting, it felt mildly forced to please the large number of attending guests. The memorial was beautiful, clear, and serene, much like Dr. King’s dream. What I liked best of the area, however, was the garden planted outside of the museum. It was an array of roses of many different colors, which represented the different races of people living together. Through the middle of the garden was a continuous stream of red roses that symbolized the blood and suffering whose role in the Civil Rights Movement has been unremitting. It was beautiful, simple, and complex, all at the same time, like the movement itself.

After a long trip and a plane ride home, after we had landed in Boston and as we were riding back to Lincoln-Sudbury, our group of thirty tired highschoolers looked out the windows. We were sad to go home, yet eager to sleep in our own beds. We all learned a lot and experienced something unique. We started singing, just as Hollis Watkins had taught us: “Been down into the South…”

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