Montgomery is the capital of Alabama, and the area with the government buildings is quite attractive. The downtown shopping area is practically extinct, however. Where various stores once stood, there are now only empty buildings. We had seen other small towns in a similar condition, but Montgomery was the largest city we had seen so depressed. I don't think that this was the result of the current economic crisis. The desertion of the central city was too complete to have happened recently. Apparently it was, as with many other towns, a result of the growth of shopping centers in the area around the city. Harrisburg and other cities in central Pennsylvania were like this for several years beginning in the sixties but have since recovered to a large extent. Perhaps Montgomery will someday recover as well.
The only other activity we saw in this area besides the Civil Rights Museum and the Civil Rights Monument standing beside the museum was an area where women were selling pies and cakes for the fight against breast cancer. We bought what we thought was a pie (but turned out to be a coffee cake) as a house gift for my cousin in Montevallo.
The only other activity we saw in this area besides the Civil Rights Museum and the Civil Rights Monument standing beside the museum was an area where women were selling pies and cakes for the fight against breast cancer. We bought what we thought was a pie (but turned out to be a coffee cake) as a house gift for my cousin in Montevallo.
The Civil Rights Museum was a very well-done history of the Movement. The most moving and interesting presentation in the museum was a hologram (like a 3D movie) of the bus incident with Rosa Parks which sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King in Montgomery. To watch it was not at all like just watching a movie. It was like being on the curb watching the incident unfold on the bus before our eyes!
Outside the museum and just a short way down the street was the Civil Rights Monument. It consisted of a large metal disc on which was engraved the names of leaders of the Movement and those who had been murdered because of their involvement in the Movement. Most of the names were those which I remembered from living through that era.
Just behind the monument was a large wall, with water pouring down it in a perpetual waterfall. On the wall were engraved the words of Martin Luther King from one of his speeches: ". . . until Justice rolls down like waters and Righteousness like a mighty stream." I suppose we are still waiting for that day; prejudice and discrimination still exist, but at least the daily obvious humiliations of "separate and unequal" have been pretty much eliminated.
The previous night I had called my cousin Harry who lives in Montevallo about 30 miles south of Birmingham to let him know that we were in the area and would like to visit him. Since we hadn't talked in at least fifteen years and had only kept track of each other through his sister who lived in Harrisburg, I wasn't sure what kind of reception I would get. He was very pleased to hear from me, however, urged us to come visit and invited us to stay over at his house.
Montevallo was a small town (about 4,000 people) when I visited there as a child in the forties and early fifties. I don't think it is much larger today. My mother's brothers had gone to Montevallo to open dry goods stores shortly after they graduated high school and my mother had followed them and worked in one of her brothers' stores after dropping out of college.
My cousin Harry and Betty
My cousin Harry grew up there and now lives a quiet life in the same house he had continued to live in with his parents until their deaths. He had come to Harrisburg several times to visit his sister and once to Hawaii with a lady friend as part of a group, but he was quite content to remain in Montevallo most of the time. The house was immaculately clean and well-cared for and little had been changed since I was there as a child. Even the old dial phone was still there. One difference was that whatever was done in the house, he did. The days of a Black woman coming in every day to do the cooking and cleaning were apparently long gone. He mentioned that one couldn't even find someone to fill that role today. He plays tennis three times a week, attends occasional events at the college, knows most of the people in town, watches a lot of sports on TV, and goes out to eat or watches TV with his lady friend whom we met and liked. He also helps her deliver meals to homebound elderly. It's a quiet life, quite different from my own, but he seemed quite satisfied and comfortable with it. Who could ask for much more than that?
Montevallo was a small town (about 4,000 people) when I visited there as a child in the forties and early fifties. I don't think it is much larger today. My mother's brothers had gone to Montevallo to open dry goods stores shortly after they graduated high school and my mother had followed them and worked in one of her brothers' stores after dropping out of college.
My cousin Harry grew up there and now lives a quiet life in the same house he had continued to live in with his parents until their deaths. He had come to Harrisburg several times to visit his sister and once to Hawaii with a lady friend as part of a group, but he was quite content to remain in Montevallo most of the time. The house was immaculately clean and well-cared for and little had been changed since I was there as a child. Even the old dial phone was still there. One difference was that whatever was done in the house, he did. The days of a Black woman coming in every day to do the cooking and cleaning were apparently long gone. He mentioned that one couldn't even find someone to fill that role today. He plays tennis three times a week, attends occasional events at the college, knows most of the people in town, watches a lot of sports on TV, and goes out to eat or watches TV with his lady friend whom we met and liked. He also helps her deliver meals to homebound elderly. It's a quiet life, quite different from my own, but he seemed quite satisfied and comfortable with it. Who could ask for much more than that?
My grandarents and the families of two of my uncles had lived in Montevallo. As a child, I had gone there with my parents every summer to visit them, first by train and later by car. I have very pleasant memories both of the time I spent there with my mother's family and of the trips there. I remember clearly the clickety clack of the train, playing Uncle Wiggly (a board game) with my sister, and looking out the window at night at the lights of the towns we passed. On the car trips, we often stopped along the way to look at scenic highlights. I especially remember the Luray Caverns and the Natural Bridge in Virginia. I also remember the hilly roads in Maryland on Route 11, where my sister and I invariably threw up from car sickness.
I had not been to Montevallo for at least thirty years and maybe more. I wanted to see my grandparents' house (if it was still standing) and just walk around some of the area where I had spent those summer days of my youth.
My grandparents' house was still there. Aluminum siding had been added and it actually looked a lot better than I remembered it from sixty years ago.
Downtown Montevallo had not changed much, except that several of the storefronts were now empty. It wasn't as bad as Montgomery, but it wasn't good. The town's lone movie theater where whites once sat downstairs and Blacks sat in the balcony was gone. The local college where my mother had attended for a year was still there. The name had changed from Alabama College to Montevallo College but the biggest change was that when Elise and I took a short walk through the central part of the campus, there were black students setting up for some kind of a picnic with loud rap music - a scene which would have been unthinkable in the forties or fifties.
I was told that the public schools had also been integrated. What used to be the black school was now the junior high school for both races. When I walked past the high school athletic field around 5:00, there were a number of students playing at various unorganized games - not only a mix of blacks and whites but also a mix of girls and boys. My observations were inevitably pretty superficial, but just walking by it seemed that blacks and whites, girls and boys, were interacting pretty freely with each other and did not generally divide up by race or gender.
Until I was a teenager - or perhaps later - I thought that my mother had grown up in Montevallo, but this was not actually the case. She was actually born and raised in West Blocton, an even smaller town than Montevallo, about half an hour's drive away. I wanted to see it, and Harry offered to drive us there.
Signpost in West Blocton
The town had never been very large. It was originally the commercial center for the town of Blocton, whichwas a company town for a nearby mining operation long closed. According to a plaque in front of the courthouse, in 1910, the town had fifty-five thriving businesses, and various religious institutions including a synagogue. Now, however, the town had obviously fallen upon hard times. The two blocks of the business area consisted almost entirely of empty storefronts, some with signs still indicating the nature of the businessesthat had once occupied them. There were no more than two or three stores still in operation. The synagoguewas long gone. Apparently my grandparents' house was still there, but Harry wasn't able to locate it.
We went out with Harry and his friend Betty for a very pleasant dinner at a Chinese restaurant, then returned to his house and went to bed.
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