FIRST LEG: PISGAH FOREST TO SELMA APR 28 - MAY1

               The day before we left an enormous tornado system tore through the Southeast, killing  300 and converting many places to rubble. Irony: those of us it missed were left with a beautiful high, brilliant, cool weather.  The trip to Selma took eight hours of pleasant driving.  We ripped down through Atlanta on I-85,  got off the interstate at La Grange and took a nice quiet 2-lane, US 29, south.  Stopped at a Corps of Engineers park on Lake West Point and I honked on my French horn for a while. Went through West Point with its huge dead textile factory, and into Selma in time for dinner with Norm and Jackie Trotter.

               I have three buddies that go all the way back to high school:  Robert Taylor, Norm Trotter, Joe Wright.  We were always bunched together by teachers who sat classes in alphabetical order, and we were geeks: me the scientist, Robert the doctor, Joe and Norm engineers.  50+ years later, we still keep in touch and try to get together once a year, though Joe has a hard time participating. We’ve been good husbands, hard-working career guys, only two of us have been married more than once and those two were widowers.  We enjoy reuniting.  This weekend we are attending the Selma Civil War Reenactment. 

L-R: the Wauchopes, Trotters and Taylors (missing: the Wrights)

Selma! A fabulously wealthy town in King Cotton days,

Mabry-Jones home (1850) one of the finest ante-bellum Greek revival houses in the south

but most famous for the Voting Rights Marches to The Bridge and Bloody Sunday,  1965, the climactic event of the civil rights movement.  A vicious attack by the Sheriff and his deputies with dogs, night sticks and tear gas, on marchers pledged to nonviolence .  Television images outraged the nation and  led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. 

               So—aging liberal that I am, I wondered if we were going to be taking part in a reactionary celebration of the Ole South and white gentility (and supremacy).  Well—yes and no!  Norm is clearly a big fish in this small pond and greatly enjoyed showing us his town. Many magnificent old homes (including his, which is known to be haunted) which deserve preservation as treasures of architecture.  Jackie is a horsewoman and we met her beautiful horse:

We met the mayor and the chief of police:  guess what, both black and impressive moderates.  The Mayor, wonderfully,  uses The Bridge  as a symbol for looking to the future, not the past. 

On the wall of the mayor's office...

 He was charming and self-assured, and clearly enjoys the struggle, clearly a hopeful bridge himself. Still, conversation with my hosts reveals a continuing deep resentful cultural divide between blacks and whites. The blacks celebrate Bloody Sunday here with little participation by whites (“They trash the city!”).  Whites celebrate the Reenactment with zero participation by blacks.

               So: two versions of history still prevail.  The economic disparity is still obvious, and vast. But there is progress.  Sheriff Jim Clark and his dogs and cattle prods are long gone. The police are integrated, as is the town council.  Some of those fabulous old homes in “old town” (Norm is active in the Olde Towne Association) are owned by African-Americans.  Norm agrees with me: Selma is a place where somehow folks might ultimately learn how to be a diverse community that gets along--because they have to.  My feeling is, while whites might need to show more grace across the divide, blacks might need to look more to the future, perhaps to treasure their historical grievance a little less—kinda like us Confederates. 

         Awright, bluebellies! The fight is this afternoon and the rebs are gonna win, and tonight we will peer through the fence at a grand ball in period dress where the War of Northern Aggression looks like it will be won by the right side this time.  It will be fun. Tomorrow they will fight the same reenactment again and the historically correct winners will prevail.  Seems like the blacks could come out and cheer...

Johnny gets ready for battle. The golf cart isn't authentic but the raggedy uniforms are: this battle occurred close to the end of the war and the rebs were in desperate straits. These boys are lucky to have shoes.

The "Alabama 5th Ingantry Regimental Band." Istruments are not authentic but the music was--and well done. I requested "Just before the Battle, Mother" and they said they planned to play it--just before the battle.

High-water mark of the Yankees, on the day that they lose.

The spectators.  It was fun and in fact brings a lump to the throat. I know it's glorification of a cause that needed to lose. Can't help it. Hallowed ground.