Like the last time we visited Montgomery Alabama, the capital city of the State of Alabama, we took a stroll around the downtown area to once again absorb the history Montgomery is known for.
What began as a settlement of the Alabama and Coushatta Indians who lived on opposite sides of the Alabama River, Montgomery became the second largest city in Alabama as it is today. It has a storied past and in the 1860’s when the Confederate States of America were formed Montgomery was named the first capital of the nation and Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as its President.
This historical house he and his family lived in is still standing today. Montgomery went through a lot after the Union finally came through town. Good times were had until the 1950-s and 1960’s when Montgomery became a hotbed of the civil rights movement.
What started as a seemingly innocuous event on December 1, 1955 when a young lady named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and was immediately arrested, became the catalyst for another well known civil rights event, the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Also in the town of Montgomery a young charismatic man known as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., then pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, helped organize the boycott. Shortly after, in the summer of 1956, the US District Court ruled that Montgomery's bus racial segregation was unconstitutional… and so began a legion of cultural changes to the way of life in Montgomery as well as the entire USA..
Several years later in 1965 Martin Luther King returned to Montgomery where he and other civil rights leaders helped organize the March to Montgomery Capitol Building to petition then Governor George Wallace to allow free voter registration. This event led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (back when Congress worked!) which enforced the rights of African Americans and other minorities to vote.
On our walk to Montgomery's Capitol Building.we saw historical markers of not only the events of the Confederate inauguration of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate White House he and his family lived in, the church in which they prayed but in addition a flash forward in history to the location where Rosa Parks waited for the bus, the parking lot for the gathering of the bus boycott and past the church where Martin Luther King once preached. We also learned Montgomery became the state’s capitol in 1847. We had an incredible walk through the history of Montgomery.
We ended our day at Mellow Mushroom, a regional pizza chain, where there always is a nice happy hour. After all that walking we needed a little pick me up!
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