5/28/07
Today we traveled through Selma, Alabama and half-way to Montgomery to an interpretive center. The center highlighted certain aspects of the march from Selma to Montgomery. I was under the impression that we were going to have a picnic since it was Memorial Day weekend and nothing was really open. This was not a bad idea to me because I thought of it as a “break” from the emotion that I had felt the previous days. Things did not quite go as I expected, because the interpretive center was full of information and the film we watched was by far the best that we had seen.
On a happier note I met some of the workers from the center, and learned from them that the childhood home of Ben Wallace, an NBA All-Star, was located 100 feet from where I was standing. This was very thrilling considering that he is one of my favorite NBA players. We then grilled hamburgers and hotdogs, ate watermelon, and carried on conversation with each other to end the perfect Memorial Day.
After arriving back to the hotel we walked as a class through historic downtown Montgomery. We saw the Slave trade market, and I learned an interesting fact about them. I was very unaware of how the market was organized or how slaves were chosen. My guess before reading more about this was that it was similar to the movie “Gladiator,” where the gladiators were caged and inspected by potential buyers. Those thought to be more helpful with labor were the more expensive slaves.
We walked to the state capital and I noticed that at the very front there was a large statue of Jefferson Davis, and a monument dedicated to the history of the Confederacy. There were other statues on the ground, but I had never heard of them and found it hard to understand why they had statues of them and not one of Dr. Martin Luther King, who was the pastor at a church one block down for six year.