Immersed in the Confederacy…and the aftermath

From the main entrance of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, you can look down Dexter Avenue and see the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

That’s where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had become the pastor a little over a year before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to some white folks who had boarded – an act of resistance that cracked open the racial divisions in the South – and in the nation.

Our group of eight Civil Rights pilgrims from Christ Presbyterian Church started our explorations of past and present this week. The contrasts brought into sharp relief how we as a nation got to where we are and how those divides of the past still shape our present.

Jefferson Davis, when he was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Confederacy, stood on the steps of the Capitol on February 18, 1861. A band played a brand new song – “Dixie.”  Alabama was among the first six states to secede from the Union and it had joined the Confederacy on Feb. 4, 1861.

As we saw on a plaque a bit farther down Dexter Avenue, the order to fire on Fort Sumpter in Charleston, S.C. came from the Confederate offices in Montgomery on April 11. The Civil War was underway.

Even though more than a century has passed, the Civil War is still very present here. Outside the Capitol is an enormous monument to Confederate soldiers, including this inscription: “The Knightliest Knights of the Knightly Race.” And in the historic House Chamber is a sign at the front highlighting that fact the “In this Hall the ordinance of Secession which withdrew Alabama from the Union of Sovereign States was passed – Jan. 11, 1861.”

Across the street from the Capitol is what is called the Confederate White House – the place where Davis and his family lived during the three months that the Capitol was in Montgomery before it moved to Richmond, Va. Bob Wieland, the curator of the museum, sang “On Wisconsin” as he went to get us water and regaled us with stories of life in the house during that time. He showed us the room where Davis would meet with his cabinet in those times. On the piano is the music for “Dixie.”

While the official sites have a bit more acknowledgement of the fact that there was a Civil Rights movement, there is nothing about slavery – which, it turns out was the cause of the Civil War – or the role the white power structure after the war to isolate and terrorize black people. 

The lingering effects of that were very clear at the Rosa Parks Museum. With videos, documents, photos and a sense of movement, visitors get the sense of the issues facing Black people, their frustration and then their resistance. 

The legal attacks, the bombings of homes, the courage of King and Parks and so many more provide an inspiring counterpoint to the celebration of the Confederacy in so many places.

But that was just the beginning. 

Tomorrow, we are off to Selma.