I’ve got to get back, figuratively speaking, to our Florida trip…the last part of it, anyway.
We had planned to drive back in two days, two long days. But a couple of days before our scheduled departure from Clearwater, Patty mentioned the possibility of taking three days. I jumped on that for a couple of reasons: First, I was itching to get moving, and, second, my night vision is not what it used to be and I don’t like driving at night.
It also occurred to me we could stop at Montgomery, Alabama — about an 8-hour drive from Clearwater — and go to The Legacy Museum.
The full title explains…The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. It’s the powerful and soul-crushing story of enslavement in America.
Nearby is the outdoor National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a six-acre site that depicts — through sculpture, art and design — the terror of lynching. The centerpiece of the memorial is a winding display of 800 suspended, metal “caskets,” symbolizing the approximately 4,000 lynchings that took place in the United States. The caskets bear the names of victims and the counties and states where their deaths took place.
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On Thursday, March 3, we drove to Montgomery. We spent the night at an Airbnb not far from downtown. Here’s a photo I took of a spectacular fountain a couple of blocks from the State Capitol, which is visible in the deep background.
The next morning, Friday, we headed for the Legacy Museum. You can’t take photos inside, but the photo below shows what the front looks like. The museum and outdoor memorial opened in April 2018. Both were founded and developed by a nonprofit called the Equal Justice Initiative. The cost was about $20 million, which consisted of private and foundation money. Former Vice-President Al Gore spoke at the opening ceremony.
Among other things, the museum features first-person accounts of slavery and auctioning through narration and voice overs. Like a good newspaper story, the museum captures visitors’ attention at the very outset. Sounds of crashing waves play as huge, animated videos reflect the plight of 12 million people captured from Africa and put on ships, never to see their homeland again. Two million of those people died on the ships or in the sea.
We spent at least two hours at the museum and could have spent a couple more. But we had to get moving, so it was on to the memorial. There I took these two photos, one of a sculpture, the other of a plaque that illustrates how harmless an action it took for some white people to decide to snuff out the life of a Black.
Foolishly, I didn’t take a photo of the “caskets,” but here’s one I found on the internet.
We left Montgomery Friday afternoon, and about 8 that night we got to Memphis. What a town! We stayed at a downtown hotel and after dinner headed to Beale Street. This is what it looks like, I believe, on most weekend nights.
Two blocks of the street are blocked off on weekends. Bars, restaurants and retail stores line up one after another. We had heard about B.B. King’s Blues Club, and that’s where we ended up stopping. The cover charge was $10 each, but the show, by the B.B. King Blues Band, was well worth it. (I stood on a wooden chair to get this shot.)
On Saturday morning, after going to a coffee shop for breakfast, we stumbled upon the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed by James Earl Ray. Not thinking about the motel and not expecting it, we were a bit shocked to happen upon it.
But there it was, looking just about like it did on that fateful day, April 4, 1968. The motel is now part of The National Civil Rights Museum, which opened in 2014.
The room outside which King was standing — 306 — is memorialized with a large wreath, which hangs from the balcony where King was standing when Ray shot him from a nearby boarding house. Parked in front of first-floor rooms are replicas of a 1968 Cadillac and a 1959 Dodge, which were parked outside the motel the evening of the assassination.
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I’m sorry I don’t have a happier ending to this post, but I’m sure you can see why I was compelled to do it.
Much of history is hell, and we’re living today through a war that will add another hellish chapter to the checkered history of the world.
Anyway, good to be home.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The Civil Rights Museum is well worth a visit. And Sun Studios, where Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins (the Million Dollar Quartet), got their start, is a few blocks up the street.
Next time, Randy.
Drinks in the lobby of the Peabody to watch the ducks.
Saw that about 35 years ago.
Upon recommendation of the waitress at breakfast for the best BBQ in Memphis other than the tourist spots, we ate lunch at the Central BBQ across the street from the Lorraine Motel. After we ordered at the counter I asked about their smoker and when asked I mentioned I was from KC, the manager treated us like royalty, a complete tour of the stainless steel automatic smoker, I mentioned LC’s, Byrants’s and Gate’s real brick pits have their own flavor and he agreed. The waitress was right — damn good pulled pork sandwich.
Jim, I’m glad you had a good time in Memphis, my hometown.