Our time in Greensboro and Atlanta had offered us warm breezes, the sun on our faces as we took time to soak in where we were. Visiting such moving sites and memorials, as well as speaking with living civil rights heroes, was dream-like. I had been in a sort of dreamy, reflective state on the past ever since.
Montgomery, Alabama has been this dream’s rude awakening.
When we arrived at the Capitol, I felt something take hold in my gut that’s still hard to describe with words – a sort of deep discomfort / nauseous angst that I can’t quite shake.
Montgomery’s downtown is built up with sky-high, cube-shaped buildings. In other parts of the South, they could be described as “grand,” but, here, they come across as over-inflated, with massive columns and roofs boasting an off-shade of green.
Still, I found myself trying to give Montgomery the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, yeah, most of the paint’s peeling, but that must be hard upkeep given the humidity.”
As we moved through the Capitol, though, I felt like I was on the set of a movie — lifeless, dingy square buildings lined Dexter Ave. This is the same street that hosted countless slave markets, George Wallace’s Inaugural Address, Rosa Park’s boarding the infamous bus, and so much more. Seeing the merge of the Civil War and Civil Rights in one place was powerful. And I wanted to be inspired like I was in D.C., North Carolina, and Georgia, but I couldn’t feel it.
Eventually, we moved away from the Capitol. Driving just two miles outside, my eyes opened wider at gross dilapidation; overgrown, litter-filled yards; boarded windows and doors. Our bus inched down these narrow streets to see the houses that prominent Civil Rights figures lived in. What appeared as abandoned neighborhoods slowly revealed itself as home to many Alabamians. It felt like we were gawking at real poverty, and I just wanted to shut my eyes for good.
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The reason why Montgomery seemed so overwhelmingly negative is because it was. The Civil Rights Movement was not ringing with King’s “dream” in Alabama. It was filled with violence and tears and sweat and heartache and the sort of frustration you can’t articulate except with a scream.
I find it hard to swallow that, 50 years later, Montgomery is still in shambles. This is especially difficult since, the way it’s been taught, I’ve almost assumed that the Civil Rights Movement ended with success.
Here, I’ve learned that’s not the case, at all.
Later that evening, we were joined for dinner by Alabama native Deborah Carr. Deb was arrested last year — not in 1960, but in 2013. In an attempt to raise funding for the only black Catholic school in Montgomery, Deb approached her own church’s white priest. On the grounds of trespassing, he called the police to take her to jail. She stayed among 31 other female inmates from 6:00 pm until 2:00 am, until her grandson picked her up.
Deb chose not to advertise being arrested by her own church in order to keep black children in church and off the streets.
When I asked her what we can do for viable change, Deb answered me honestly: “You can’t understand until you get out there in the real world and get your hands on it [the problem]… and your hand gets slapped, and then you get mad, and you fight for change.”
We can’t just be “tolerant” (Deb’s least-favorite word) because it’s the same as being complacent. If we accept “the same,” we’ll only end up worse-off. We need to be open to honest conversations. We don’t need tolerance; we need “great love.” I realize that it’s still got a long way to go — in Alabama and in the United States.
It’s hard to be in Montgomery. It’s not fun to feel this way. But when these stark realities appear in our lives, it’s so, so important to be unsettled. That’s how we see change.