Ghosts of Alabama Past

We arrived at our next destination, Auburn Alabama, at a quarter to 6. Since it was late, we decided to spend the night in the WalMart parking lot to save money and to pick up a few provisions. However, when we pulled into the busy, crowded parking lot and didn’t see a good spot to park overnight, we changed our minds and headed to Chewacla State Park. We got there right before they closed and, in this particular campground, they lock the gate!  The only reason we made it is that we were now in central time, so it was actually 4:58, not 5:58. (Once you register they give you the code for the gate.) Soon after we set up, it started raining cats and dogs, so it was better not to be fiddling with the generator in the rain after all.

Horsehoe Bend

The next few days we learned a lot of history. Horseshoe Bend National Military Park is where, in a bend of the Tallapoosa river, Chief Menawa and 1,000 Creek warriors made their last stand. On March 26, 1814, General Andrew Jackson, with a force of 3,300 killed over 800 Indians. Around 200 of his men died. Chief Menawa was wounded seven times and played dead until nightfall when he swam across the river and escaped. After that, the Creek confederacy ceded 23 million acres of their territory to the U.S. This land became Alabama. Jackson was promoted. There’s not much to see at the park but grass and trees, but after watching the video and reading the information in the museum, you drive around the battlefield, stopping at various points, and imagine what happened that day.

We learned a different part of American history the following day when we went to Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, where black Americans trained to become fighter pilots during WWII. They weren’t allowed to integrate with the regular units, so they had their own facility.

Nearby Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) was a college established in 1881 where blacks learned practical job skills. Booker T. Washington, born a slave in 1856, was its first president. George Washington Carver was head of the Agriculture department. We visited Booker T.’s  home (The Oaks), which had state-of-the-art heating, plumbing and electricity for the time period. At the Carver Museum on campus, we learned how Carver invented 300 uses for peanuts, traveled the countryside teaching farmers how to improve the soil, among other things, and about his many other contributions to agriculture. 

In the afternoon we went bicycling in Tuskegee National Forest on a trail that David thought would be too technical. It was a bit too hilly and rooty for me, but he enjoyed it.

We moved to another nice campground--Gunter Hill--outside Montgomery. There weren’t many other campers at the previous campgrounds, and this one was no exception. The warm, beautiful, sunny weather continued as we soaked up more history.

There wasn’t much to see at Fort Toulouse-Jackson Park, just a couple partially-reconstructed wooden forts and a Mississippian Indian mound that looked like a little hill covered with vegetation. But we liked the feel of the place--its wide-open grassy areas, old, Spanish moss-laden trees and river views.

Montgomery is a nice town with lots of history. At the visitor’s center in the old Union station, you learn what the area has to offer. We drove around and looked at monuments, statues and memorials, 

visited the Civil Rights Center, an art museum, the first White House of the Confederacy and toured the capital. We dodged 55 little kids at the State Archives & History museum. One little boy, looking at a glass case of old military revolvers, said wistfully, “I wish I could buy one of those”. 

Civil Rights memorial

looking up at church organ pipes

When you walk in the door at the St. Johns Episcopal church and look up at the ceiling, you see pipes from the organ sticking straight out over the entrance. I thought it made an interesting photo.

We drove to Selma where Martin Luther King led marchers 54 miles to the capitol in Montgomery March 21-25, 1965 to demand voting rights for blacks. Blacks were legally allowed to vote, but local registration 

practices made it difficult or impossible for most of them to register. As a result of this protest, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6. Half-way to Selma, the National Park Service has an excellent, extensive interpretive center explaining all the events surrounding the march and other civil rights events.

There was still more to see and do in Montgomery, but it was time to move on.