Dreaming in Atlanta

We travelled today into the state of Georgia and to its capital city of Atlanta.

Atlanta is the transport hub of the south eastern United States and it is the birthplace of Martin Luther King Junior and Coca Cola (The world HQ of the Coke corporation is in the city where the drink was first invented).

First up we visited Ebenezeer Baptist Church where MLK junior's father ('Daddy King) was the pastor. Here the young Martin was baptised at the age of 5, and here he preached for the first time at the age of 17, before his ordination at the age of 19.

In the basement of the church which is now a national heritage site, a young man (right) introduced us  to the history of the building, and then gave a brilliant word for word rendition of Martin Luther King Junior's 'I have a dream speech', first given in front of the Lincolm memorial in Washington DC.

We then went upstairs to see the worship area (or 'sanctuary' as Americans call it) where the King family worshipped and where Martin's father preached. and where, tragically MLKJ's mother was shot dead by a deranged individual some years after her son's assassination:

Just up the road from Ebenezeer Baptist church is the home where MLKJ was born and where he lived as a boy:

And nearby is his tomb and that of his wife;

And also in the immediate vicinity ia  the MLKJ National Historic Site Visitor's Center (right) - a brilliant display which I will say more about tomorrow when we are due to visit again to view the exhibitions in the visitor center in more detail, but for today one particular incident stuck in my mind.

In the visitor's center there was an exhibit that consisted of life size models of marchers, marching for racial equality - men, women, boys, girls, black and white.

Many visitors  posed for photographs of themselves with the marchers. One family caught my eye. There were two boys, about 14, two younger kids, mum and dad. All black. The mum wanted one of the 14 year old boys to pose with one of the model marchers, a boy of about the same age as himself. He stood there in a slightly embarassed but I'll do this to please mum manner and smiled for the photo.

But Mum wasn't quite happy with the shot. She wanted her son to hold the hand of the model white boy , which he duly and shyly did ( just for a moment) while mum took her picture.

Immediately I caught on to what she was doing. Earlier we had heard MLKJ's 'I have a dream speech' which included these words:

'one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers'

That's why she wanted her black boy to hold the hand of the white boy.

She had a dream and she wanted her son to be part of it. Wonderful.

Please God, may he even experience the reality of it. .

Birmingham, Alabama

Through the agency of a friend of a friend, we have been able enjoy the warm Christian hospitality of John and Anne-Marie, in Birmingham, Alabama. We started the day after a restful night in their house (left) , with a tour of the local area, including the high school where there two younger teenage children go (there were over three hundred cars in the school students car park), and the nearby Samford University, a baptist institution of over 4,000 students, where John and Anne-Marie met.

It is a beautiful campus, with large sweeping lawns, and lots of mature trees - indeed, the whole city of Birmingham is very green, aided by the warm and wet southern climate (twice the annual rainfall of London, and much hotter)..

 In the city of Birmingham itself our first stop was the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a wonderful museum telling the whole story of the civil rights movement in a very clear and compelling way.

Across the road from the Institute is the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the scene of one of the great tragedies in the struggle for human rights, when on Sunday 15th September 1963 white racists exploded a bomb beneath the front steps of the church which killed four young girls and injured 22 others.

With wonderful hospitality we were welcomed and showed around the building of this church which is still a very live and thriving community.

There are many mementos of the four girls including in the main sanctuary (above) and in this line drawing displayed in the church basement:

Across the road from the church and the Civil Rights movement there is a further memorial of those terrible events of September 1963 in a sculpture entitled: 'A Love That Forgives:'

It is well done and well said. It is good that these things are being remembered in Birmingham, Alabama.

Justice like a mighty stream

With yesterday's severe weather having moved east we could resume our journey across the state of Mississippi into the state of Alabama.

It was 90F in Meridian yesterday. Today the sun was shining but the temperature had dropped more than twenty degrees.

Our first stop today was in the city of Selma where we visited the National Voting Rights Museum (left)

After the Civil War, slavery was abolished and black men in the south were given the vote, but very soon the southern states enacted legislation that made it almost impossible for black people to register to vote.

It took the struggle of the civil right movement in the 1960s for black people in the south to have in reality, what was all along theirs in theory - the precious right to vote.

From Selma we drove to Montgomery, the capital of the state of Alabama, to visit the Rosa Parks
museum.

Rosa Parks (right) was the woman who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on Montgomery's segregated bus system. The 13-month bus boycott that followed was one of the key early events in the civil rights movement in the south in the mid 1950s.

The museum brilliantly recreated the events of that crucial day in American history, and with all that followed, in an amazing display of light and sound which included a full size bus. Sadly we weren't allowed to take photos.

Next we visited Dexter Baptist Church (left), close to the state capitol, where the young Martin Luther King was the minister.

Our guide was an amazing African American woman, who spoke with great vigour and passion, and had us all join hands at the end of the tour and sing 'we shall overcome...deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome, someday.'

It was a moment I shall long remember, and it reminded me of the two black women standing in the national mall at Washington on the day of Obama's inauguration as president (for the first time). The were holding up a hand made placard which simply bore the words: 'We have overcome.'

Martin Luther King's study at the church. His preaching gown is hanging on the wall behind

Dexter Baptist Church

Nearby was the Civil Rghts Memorial Center, commemorating more than 40 people who lost their lives during the civil rights struggle. Inside there were brief biographies of all those who had died. Outside was  the memorial, based on the words of the prophet Amos quoted by Martin Luther King: 'until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.'

Severe weather, murals & a Coke

As well as fending off the alligators you have to keep your eye out for tornadoes when travelling through the southern states at this time of year.

The Governor of Alabama has declared a state of emergency today in his state, and all schools  have been closed, in view of the forecast of severe storms, with hailstones the size of golf balls, and a seventy per cent chance of life-threatening tornadoes.

This area is not known as tornado-alley for nothing.

Today we had been due to drive to Montgomery, Alabamba in a 357 mile drive but with Montgomery literally predicted to be at the eye of the storm by this afternoon, it seemed prudent to stop at the Mississippi town of Meridian (about two thirds of the way there) and to resume our journey tomorrow.

On our way to Meridian we drove along part of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444 mile long scenic road, constructed during the Great Depression of the 1930s to create much needed employment in the south.

We then left the Parkway to visit the town of Vicksburg, the site of a key civil war battle, on the banks of the Mississippi.

We toured the historic downtown, admired the murals illustrating the town's history (close to the river), and we visited the Coca-Cola Museum, at the site where that famous drink  (invented in nearby Atlanta) was first bottled. Prior to that you had to buy your Coke at a drugstore soda fountain.

Just think what America has given to the world. All this and KFC, too.

Mississippi at Vicksburg

Coca Cola Museum, Vicksburg

Coca Cola Museum

Downtown Vicksburg

Vicksburg murals

The mighty Mississippi

This (below) is the big house, dating from 1752, where the owners of Whitney Plantation lived.

Further along the River Road we later visited the St Joseph plantation which still functions as a sugar cane plantation and has been owned by the same family for over a hundred years.

The mansion at St Joseph plantation is beautifully presented 18th century masterpiece (below).

In between visiting the two plantations we visited a country diner for lunch. Once again alligator sandwiches were on the menu, as were alligator burgers. You could also buy a pack of alligator flavoured crisps to take home. (Meanwhile Ruth tells me - she knows things like this - that are three million alligators in the state of Louisiana. At Whitney, we saw one of them basking in the sun, by the pond).

St Joseph Plantation

We resisted the temptation to consume any alligator meat over lunch but I did have a Louisianan 'Po'boy.' (short for Poorboy, a meat sandwich served in a long roll a bit like a baguette) and very delicious it was, too.

From the river road we travelled to Baton Rouge, the state capital of Louisiana, to spend the night in our next Airbnb.

Today we were up early to visit the Louisiana State Capitol, built in the 1930s, and said to be the tallest such building in the US. The views from the 24th floor observation deck were spectacular of the city and the Mississippi River. On the ground floor was the state House of 

Representatives and the state Senate (mirroring the two houses of congress at Washington) and these were connected by the extraordinary memorial hall, an art deco tour de force.

It was then time to bid Baton Rouge and the state of Louisiana farewell as we set off for the city of Natchez in the state of Mississippi.

Natchez has been controlled by the Spanish, the French and the British. It has been in the Unites States (before the Civil War), out of it (during the Civil War) and in it again (since the end of the civil war).

This small historic city on the banks of the mighty Mississippi is full of beautiful buildings  and today we saw it at its best in brilliant sunshine and temperatures of 85F.

 

Along the river road

The river road, that runs alongside the Mississippi from New Orleans to the state capital of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, is fringed with a series of historic plantations which were the centres of the sugar cane industry, and the centre of Louisiana slavery.

The wealth of the sugar business, so clearly expressed in the beautiful 18th century mansions that lie at the heart of each plantation, was built on the bitter suffering of hundreds of thousands slaves who were transported from West Africa to the hot and humid fields of Louisiana.

Whitney plantation is unique among the plantations along the river road in that its focus is on the experience of the slaves themselves. It is both a museum about slavery (the only one in the US) and a memorial to the slaves who lived and died on Whitney Plantation.

The picture (above) shows our guide standing in front of the memorial wall, on which the names of  all the Whitney slaves are inscribed - just their Christian names, because slaves did not have surnames - together with excerpts from the deeply affecting testimonies of elderly former slaves that were collected in the early 1930s.

Nearby, some former slave cabins (left), are a stark reminder of the primitive conditions in which the slaves lived, whilst their masters lived in the opulent splendour of the big house (see below).

In addition to the detailed documentary research that has gone into presenting the history of the Whitney Plantation (and the accompanying memorials), the owners have commissioned several pieces of art which add their own powerful message.

Throughout the site there are regular reminders of the thousands of children who were born into slavery and who worked as slaves from their earliest years in these beautiful statues of slave children, made by a local artist. It is particularly affecting to see the children sitting in the church on the plantation.

The Antioch Baptist Church was set up by freed slaves after the act of emancipation (when slavery was abolished in the US). They liked the Biblical name of Antioch because it sounded like 'Anti-Yoke' and they were profoundly anti-yoke.
'

The other very striking sculpture at Whitney is the 'Hallelujah Statue' which wonderfully expresses the joy of the slaves on the day they were set free.

I've a little more to tell you about our journey along the river road of Louisiana in a future post but the 'Hallelujah Statue' is a good note to end on for today.

Sunday in New Orleans

Not a megachurch by US standards, the First baptist Church of New Orleans is by any measure a large church, and we were there on a Sunday when they were considering a major expansion of their buildings and their mission to the city.

The present buildings were completed just before Hurricane Katrina hit the city and were very badly damaged in that catastrophe.

Before the service at FBCNO

In due course, the damage was repaired and the church continued to grow, hence the needs for the expansion plans that were being launched today - in the service and in a kind of community fun day that followed.

In addition to a worship band and a team of lead singers, there was a choir of about 50 people on the stage, half children, mainly white, but with a good sprinkling of black faces.

Entrance  concourse at First Baptist

Because of today's launch of their new growth project it wasn't a completely typical service, but it was clear that this was a lively, growing church, reaching out to the community in evangelism and social action.

It was good to hear the senior pastor preaching at today's service. He came over as both a very good preacher and a clear leader for his congregation. We were glad to be at his church if only for a brief moment, and we pray that God will bless the First Baptist Church of New Orleans as it steps out in faith.

 Back in the centre of the city, the crowds were out in force and their were numerous groups of musicians playing on the streets. Here was one of the best (left).

Later we rode on the Charles Street street car, said to be the oldest tramline in the world in continuous use, which winds its way through this beautiful city for more than seven miles:

Tomorrow we move on from New Orleans. Heavy thunderstorms, floods, and tornadoes are sweeping across the southern US tonight and the weather channel is full of the progress of the storm. It is thought that New Orleans will not be in the area most severely affected but we await developments, before definitely planning our programme for tomorrow.

New Orleans - day two

Our New Orleans Airbnb

As a result of the time difference we were awake for an exhausting 22 hours yesterday before we finally turned in for the night.

The same time factor meant that we were awake very early, and ready for breakfast at the nearby cafe, Bayou Breakfast, when it opened at 7am.

Frogs legs and alligator

sandwiches were both on offer on the menu but we stuck to more conventional breakfast fare before heading to the historic French Quarter of the city on one of New Orleans' streetcars, (what we in BritSpeak would call trams).

The sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid 80s, and the beautiful centre of the city was thronged with visitors.

French Quarter

There is music everywhere in this wonderful city, including in the bar where we had lunch listening to this brilliant groups of young jazz musicians: