Our stay in Alabama was short but very interesting and moving. We followed part of the "civil rights" tour.
We started in Birmingham with a visit to the Civil Rights Institute - a very impressive museum built around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights struggle. Again, segregation and the humiliation blacks used to undergo not so long ago made us very silent. Especially, the bombing of the church resulting in the death of 4 little girls and the lynching of two black boys in Birmingham made our stomachs turn inside-out.
We also wandered around in Birmingham and met the people working at the local civil rights museum. One of them had worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself.
Our next stop was Montgomery. Besides the First Confederate White House (the home of confederate president Jefferson Davis) and the State Capitol, we paid a visit to the Rosa Parks Museum. Rosa Parks was one of the first black women to stand up against bus segregation by refusing to give up her bus seat to the white passengers. Her action inspired the big bus boycott, whereby the black Montgomery community refused to ride the bus as long as bus segregation was enforced. After more than one year, they finally succeeded in ending bus segregation.
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