May 3
After a goodbye to the live oaks and Lake Pontchartrain, we got on the road again.
Louisiana was the most southwestern state we needed for this road trip, so we needed to wend our way back east and north again. We decided to stop for a few nights at the Prairie Creek Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers site, near the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.
The campground was lovely, generously spaced sites, surrounded by one of Alabama river lakes.
May 4
We headed into Selma and our first stop was the National Voting Rights museum located at the foot of the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge. Despite its nondescript exterior, this museum does a great job with exhibits that show the voting rights struggle in America, especially "Bloody Sunday”, the Selma to Montgomery March, and the Civil Rights Movement throughout the South.
We crossed over the bridge and paid a visit to the National Park Service Selma Interpretive center, where I inspired a whole bunch of folks to start their own National Park Passports!
After a delicious small town diner lunch, we headed to Montgomery and to the Equal Justice Initiative Museum and Memorial. If you are ever near Montgomery, do not miss these places. The Legacy Museum is an incredibly well done, moving, painful, and sobering experience. It’s an immersive look at the history of the slave trade, racial terrorism, and present day prison system.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice was also compelling, acknowledging the thousands of racial terror lynchings that have occurred in the U.S.
This was a heavy, thought-provoking day. We unwound with one last outing to the Montgomery Art Museum. There was an event in the sculpture garden where we got to unwind a bit.
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