This week in Montgomery, The ‘Alabama Political Reporter’ delivered this headline on August 7: “Brawl Erupts after White boaters attack Black city worker” resulting from viral video of the attack. On the question of “Knowledge”, here in this space, the inquiry becomes “what do you KNOW about Montgomery?
At least ten years or more ago I came across a post identifying the ‘Equal Justice Initiative’ and followed the link to find a MAN OF WHOM I had no Knowledge, Bryan Stevenson. The EJI.org offered a Book on the Lynching history in America… for FREE. From the time that I opened the mailer and held his work in my hands Bryan Stevenson became a ‘Living Guide for my Faith Journey.
Then I saw a picture of him standing next to the ‘Historical Marker’ erected on the Riverfront Montgomery, Commerce Street. “Commerce Street was central to the operation of Montgomery’s slave trade. Enslaved people were marched in chains up the street from the riverfront and railroad station to the slave auction site or to local slave depots. Warehouses were critical to the city’s slave trade. Slave traders confined enslaved people in warehouses until they could be sold during slave auctions. At 122 Commerce Street was a very large warehouse owned by John Murphy, who provided support to slave traders in the city and built the Murphy house on Bibb Street. The Commerce Street warehouse was used in the 1850s by slave traders like H.W. Farley, who advertised the sale of enslaved children, such as a boy “about fourteen, very likely and sprightly.” The warehouse remained in the hands of owners involved in the slave trade until the end of the Civil War.” Erected 2013 by Black Heritage Council, Equal Justice Initiative and
While so many were vying to get to Selma, I only wanted to get to Montgomery! Where this man had identified every “Lynched” victim in all of America’s very cynical and diabolical historical collection of photographs; found their burial ground and collected soil… in jars! Where this man, who I came to know as earning the same degree as Barack Obama, took his Harvard Law degree to Montgomery —to get us to see ALABAMA’S DEATH ROW as a new, modern, STILL LEGAL form of… LYNCHING.
I-65 straight out of downtown Nashville to downtown Montgomery! It is a ‘pilgrimage’ that requires, perhaps the annual visit. On my first trip I became so overwhelmed when I entered the Room in ‘The Legacy Museum’ that was lit like The Sun and had, not photographs, but carved bronze?, metallic? artistic renderings of our ‘Freedom Fighters’! As I sat taking notes, first of those whom I had marched, and worked, and fought beside… to those that I had no knowledge of— one of the screens inconspicuously located between the portraits came alive with video of the Battle with Stevie Wonder singing… “They won’t go where I go…!”
The ‘comic relief’ ensued on Monday as the viral Memes appeared —focused on ‘the chair’ that became a weapon in the Riverfront brawl. I commented: “Attention is called from ‘Higher Powers” to the slaves brought in on This Dock.” Take a moment to visit the eji.org site for fresh new eyes on the “Transatlantic Slave Trade” Report!
As This “Mele” on the Riverfront Dock in Montgomery Alabama has ‘Troubled the Waters’, our attention is called to the need for new eyes… an Awakening! I found an Article from the “New Yorker” of July 17, 2018, ‘A Visit to Montgomery’s Legacy Museum’:
“From 1850 until the end of the Civil War, Montgomery was the Southern port most active in slave trading—even surpassing New Orleans, where an estimated hundred and thirty-five thousand human souls were auctioned between 1804 and 1862. Markers draw attention to… the First White House of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis lived until 1861, when the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.” There you have it! Montgomery was the ‘Original Capital’ of the Confederacy… what I NOW KNOW… about Montgomery!
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