Today's tourism was mainly civil rights-focused.

I went from Selma to Montgomery on US-80. There was a stop midway, the Lowndes Interpretive Center, which was fascinating to me. I remembered history class and the Selma movie discussing the passing of the Voting Rights Act. I sure didn't remember hearing that some of the poor folks (tenant farmers/sharecroppers) who actually registered to vote faced consequences: twenty families ended up in a tent city with no running water or electricity for years. They also had a life-size room showing some of the details of the "Stars for Freedom" concert that got pulled together with folks like Harry Belafonte; Pete Seeger; and Peter, Paul, and Mary. It feels like history looks back at their efforts here generally fondly, but at the time, it must have been controversial, maybe kind of like Kaepernick today.

The Montgomery branch was mostly focused on the college students from Alabama State and the Tuskegee University (Institute) who did a lot of the rallying in Montgomery. It was the newest part of the trail to open and they were very friendly and seemed happy that I was there. They encouraged me to go to the Freedom Riders museum, and it was close, so I figured... why not?

I didn't remember much of the thrust of the Freedom Riders movement, but it was in the early 1960s (John Lewis was involved with this too, as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)). Rosa Parks's efforts in the 1950s led to a court ruling specific to Montgomery, and the focus of the Freedom Riders were trying to end the segregation in other parts of public transportation. Pretty amazing how hard the system fought back at them and how the civil rights folks needed to try different strategies, including declining to make bail as a denial of service attack (fill up the jails).

After this, I went to the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. It was fascinating that the training unit was put together, as part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), effectively as an election bargaining chip for Roosevelt, but then they ended up training some really talented pilots. I also swung by Tuskegee University, but it was closed for the weekend (summer break too).