So, yesterday we drove to Birmingham, Alabama and made for the Institute of Civil Rights, which is probably one of the best museums i'v ever visited. Straight off, you sit and watch a short film on some of the local history, which highlighted a lot of the crap that was going on with black people having to use different drinking fountains to whites, blacks having to sit at the backs of buses, different schools...the inequality of life for blacks and whites under segregation from the 1920's up to the 50's.
As the film draws to a close, the screen rises up into the ceiling, revealing the first part of the museum; sitting there are two drinking fountains, one labelled White, the other Coloured. Various examples of this kind of thing are on display. A typical white classroom next to a black one. Only half the amount of funding for education was being thrown at the schools for the black kids. Most diners were whites only places.
The museum takes you on a journey through the struggles that went on trying to get this kind of shit changed, televisions screening archive footage of demonstrations, interviews with the people of Birmingham, expressing their anger at the New York Times, who'd written a huge article condemning it's white citizens for their treatment of blacks, one guy in particular saying how white man had done so much for black man, but that, as anybody knows, if you have black chickens and white chickens, you keep 'em separate. It's better for the white chickens, it's better for the black ones. Any farmer knows that.
Film of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech and newspaper articles on the bombing of a local church, 'black' church, which killed four young girls. It took forty years to get the four men who committed this, sent to jail, where I'm very happy to say, at least one died. The rest are either already dead or will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
Ongoing...
We spent a great two and a half hours there, before making off to get some Hot Soul Food. Proper grub! The meat looked a bit too real for my liking, so we all went for their Macaroni and greens with cornbread. Add chilli sauce. Amazing! Liz, the greedy bitch, went and got a portion of sweet potato pie and then left it after a couple of mouthfuls.
We then drove to a small peanut factory, where the guy behind the counter was more than a little jealous of my ear ring. He'd tried everywhere for one that big but it wasn't happening. It was concluded that mine was a ladies ear ring. Bought a huge bag of Cajun flavoured peanuts and some salted for the monkeys. He said if I put the ear ring on the counter we could come to some kind of deal!
We stayed in Chattanooga, Tennessee where we visited Walnut Street Bridge, the worlds longest pedestrian-only bridge! Walked across a glass walkway that lead to a museum where, in it's gift shop, the lady working there, is a huge fan of Doctor Who! She just sort of came out with it once she'd established we were of Angleterre; "my two most favourite things in the world are from there, ones a tv programme I'm nuts about and one's a comedian."
Doctor Who and Eddie Izzard. She's a David Tennant fangirl but loves Matt Smith in the role too. She too, is unimpressed with the new daleks, "skittle daleks" as she calls them.
Glenn Miller and his Orchestra were awarded the worlds first ever gold record for a song about the Chattanooga choo choo, a nickname given to the train that went out from Chattanooga station. Now a hotel, the station is a museum piece, having closed it's doors when the last train left the platform in August 1970.
"Mummy, it says Vagina!"
"Virginia, it says Virginia, Oskar"
Liz is a little stressed, having had to actually drive for a couple of hours, thru the hometown of Dolly Parton and into Virginia...
...Motel 6, where are you?
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