Washington DC (2)

The sun was shining in Washington this morning and the National Mall was thronged with visitors.

Washington is unlike any other US city - it was designed by a Frenchman for a start - there is no grid plan of streets, instead streets radiate from the Capitol which is the symbolic centre of the city. There are no high rise buildings and there is much green space, not least the national mall itself, the wide green expanse that runs for two miles at the heart of the capital.

We have previously visited both the Capitol and the White House (19 years ago, when security was much more lax than it is now), so today we toured the US Supreme Court (close to the Capitol building) which its slogan 'equal justice under law' and an engraving on its bronze doors showing King John signing the Magna Carta:

Later we visited two new memorials that have been installed on the National Mall since our last visit: the World War II Memorial

and the national memorial to Martin Luther King Jr:

But there was something odd about the day and that was that it was Good Friday and Good Friday is not a public holiday in the US so it was just a day like any other day.

We were thinking of Good Friday back in Bermondsey but there was nothing in Washington to remind you of the special nature of the day, that is, until we visited the White House in the evening to see it by floodlight:

There were quite a few tourists milling around and quite a few armed police keeping an eye on everyone. And there was a man with a microphone and a portable loud speaker and he was reading from the Bible the Gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus; interspersing his readings with prayers for the people. And no one tried to stop him.

Thank you Lord that today the name of Jesus was lifted up outside the White House and thank you Lord, on this day of all days, that you did not even spare your own son, but gave him up for us all.

Washington DC

After a journey of 1724 miles through six states we arrived today at the nation's capital, left our hire car and our trusty SatNav at Ronald Reagan National Airport, and then travelled by Metro to our AirBnB home for the next few days.

Just before we arrived at Washington we visited the city of Alexandria, Virginia, saw the church (left) where George Washington worshipped (and where Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt attended church immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), and enjoyed a walk along the waterfront looking over the Potomac River to Washington DC, where the dome of the Capitol building gleamed in the sun.

North Carolina's Billy

The name of the dual carriageway running close to our hotel in Charlotte, gives a clue to one of North Carolina's most famous residents.

Today we visited the Billy Gram Library, just off the Billy Graham Parkway. This is a library on the pattern of an American presidential library - in British terms it is a museum that tells the life of a famous individual, rather than being a repository for books.

We loved everything about the Billy Graham Library. It told the amazing story of the evangelist's life. How he started as a humble farmboy in North Carolina, and became the confidant of presidents and monarchs, preaching the gospel to vast crowds in stadia and arenas all over the world.

But it did this without glorifying the man. It kept the focus on the Lord. The Gospel. The power of God's word.

And, as you would expect, there was a clear and gracious proclamation of the Gospel, with the opportunity for visitors to respond to the message there and then and to seek prayer.

The main building replicates the farm where Billy gre up and visitors follow a 'journey of faith' entering through a cross shaped door to view a series of video presentations and displays.

Nearby is the actual house where Billy Graham was born, and in the grounds is the grave of his beloved wife, Ruth.

She once saw a sign on a road where some roadworks had just been completed.  She said she wanted the same words on her grave and this has been done. So under her name on the tombstone are the words 'End of Construction. Thank you for your patience.'

I was pleased to see in the displays this photograph of the night Billy Graham preached to a paxked Wembley Stadium in 1989.

I was there as one of the counsellors and I remember the sight of hundreds and hundreds of people responding to the challenge to 'get up out of your seats' and to come forward and to follow Christ. It was a glorious night.

Ultimately, his humility, his complete integrity in financial and sexual matters, his faithfulnress to the Gospel, and his love for God and his fellow men, have made Billy the farm boy from North Carolina, a wonderful ambassador for Christ throughout the world. .

And finally, as civil rights and racial relations has been the theme of this sabbatical, it is noteworthy that the Billy Graham Library has been the most racially integrated place we have visited in the south, with black and white Christians working harmoniously together in the cause of Christ. Thanks be to God for that.

Charleston, South Carolina

Today we begin the 532 mile journey to the nation's capital which will take us two days but first there was the opportunity for breakfast at Jack's Diner (left) and a visit to Charleston, the jewel of the state South Carolina (one of the original 13 colonies), with its treasure store of 17th and 18th century buildings.

The city was named in honour of King Charles II (the state was named in honour of his father) and it was the place where the first shot was fired in the American Civil War.

It was also, tragically, the very centre of the American domestic slave trade. When the international slave trade was abolished in 1807, slaves could no longer be brought to America from Africa, but existing slaves could and were traded like property in the southern slave-owning states until all American slaves were set free in 1863.

.

The excellent Old Slave Mart Museum (right) in Charleston is housed in the very building where slaves were bought and sold right up to 1863.

It is a horrific thought, but all credit to the City of Charleston for informative and sensitive way it tells the story of the trade that disgraced this beautiful city for so long

Some pictures of historic Charleston

Savannah, Georgia

There are more museums and more references to the Civil Rights Movement than to slavery. Perhaps that is inevitable. Really Whitney Plantation is the only museum of slavery that we have come across, although in the beautiful town of Savannah, Georgia there is this fine memorial to the slaves of the south, although interesting enough Georgia, founded by Act of Parliament in 1730s, was not itself a slave state.

All the Civil Rights movement exhibitions have been done very well indeed and a great deal of money has been spent on them, particularly those in the Martin Luther King Memorial site which have been funded by the federal government.

You can't tell the story of the civil rights movement without telling the story of the church's central role and all the exhibitions we have seen fully recognise this.

The significance of the black church was three fold. It was one of the few areas of life where black people could build strong communities without interference from whites or from the authorities. Secondly, their clergy were some of the best educated people in their community. Thirdly, the core messages of the Christian faith, about the value and dignity of every person, about freedom, justice, and liberation were the inspiration for the civil rights struggle.

Savannah is a very beautiful city indeed, based around a series of squares with grand houses and huge trees.

In the middle of the Savannah is the first church, built by their own hands, of the free African Americans of the city.

 

Savannah is also the city where the young John Wesley came as a missionary before he was converted. He found he had little to offer, but he learnt a lot from the Moravian Christians he met in that city and in due course - back in London - he came to share in their gospel inspired joyful assurance. His time in Savannah is remembered in a statue in one of the city squares

From Savannah we drove into the next state, South Carolina for our visit (tomorrow) to Charleston. Before that we spent some time walking along the beach at nearby Folly Beach

before heading to our AirBnB for the night

Palm Sunday in Atlanta

Ebenezeer Baptist Church where Martin Luther king Senior was the minister, and his son was a member of the congregation, now worships in a new larger building (right) across the street from its former building, now a national historic site (which we visited yesterday).

We were there for the Palm Service of this mainly black congregation with a good sprinkling of white people. The building was filled for this, the second service of the day.

Before the service at Ebenezeer

The service was an interesting blend of the formal and informal with a printed order of service, an organ voluntary at the beginning, lively praise songs from the large choir, and a traditional hymn 'All hail the power of Jesus name.'

In this context it was particularly poignant to sing:

Let every tongue and every tribe
responsive to his call,
to him all majesty ascribe,
and crown him Lord of all.

An interesting aspect of the service was that most of the songs were sung by the choir alone.The congregation clapped and swayed to the music during the choir items, but there were relatively few songs where the congregation joined in the singing (just two or three).

Many free church have dispensed with public reading of the Scriptures and intercessory prayer in their services, but that wasn't the case here. The Pastor read three passages of Scripture before he preached, and in his Pastoral Prayer earlier in the service he prayed for specific needs of the congregation, for the city, the state, and the nation as a whole. 'Stop by Lord at Pennsylvania Avenue; Stop by at number 1600 (the White House); there's a man sitting then at a desk. Stop by and tell him that his desk is not a throne. Stop by and tell him You are on the throne. Show him your way'

Before the service at Ebenezeer we visited the fire hall (of fire station) at the MLKJ historic site. We were shown around by Leonard (left) who volunteers there. Here the young Martin Luther king Junior and the other young boys in the neighbourhood loved to visit and talk with firemen who let them  clamber over the fire engine (pictured), although the firemen told the boys they could never be firemen themselves because they were black.

It wasn't until the mid 60s that Atlanta had its first  black firemen.

Atlanta

It was now time to leave the city of Atlanta (above) and head for the Georgian coast and the city of Savannah, 248 miles away. There is a fourteen lane highway leading out of Atlanta. It was packed with fast moving traffic (where was everyone going on a Sunday afternoon?) and the fact that traffic could enter and leave the carriageway on both the left and the right, shall we say,  greatly added to the excitement of the experience.

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.'