by Joleen Burgess

Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I have faint recollections of the news images:

• A gaping hole in the side of a church.
• Chaos on a bridge with state and local police closing in from both ends.
• Vicious dogs and fire hoses in a park. Aimed at children, no less.

It was a tumultuous time. If you’re under, say 50, this is the ancient history of textbooks and TV documentaries. And that’s the whole point of Museum Without Walls – to make that history come alive, to get behind-the-scenes stories from eyewitnesses.

Eight of us from Bethany traveled with museum founder Suzzanne Lacey to sites of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. We ranged in age from 13 (Banks Hunter) to my husband Tim and me who, ahem, are old enough to remember. Our team was rounded out by Lynne Blessing, Cory Parker, Joe Hunter, SPU student Brittany Scott, and Xander Taylor who joined us after his 8th grade graduation. We built new relationships; we laughed and prayed with each other. We sweat together in the humidity of Mississippi, and we watched Lynne Blessing eat frog legs. Talk about bonding experiences!

And we cried with Suzzanne as she talked of the white Laceys in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who once owned her Lacey family. (Owned her family? That word, spoken aloud, hit us with an unexpected force.)

We stood on the sites of the Civil Rights battlefield: the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham where a bomb killed four girls preparing for a Sunday School performance; the very driveway where Medger Evans was assassinated; the Selma bridge where teens were bloodied and beaten; the park now populated with sculptures of police, dogs, fire hoses, and the children who marched for voting rights. Lest anyone forget.

More importantly, we met the people who were there, and we heard their stories.

In Selma two sisters described their panic on the Edmund Pettis Bridge when police beat and kicked the young demonstrators. They were 12 and 15 at the time. The older was beaten and bloodied. Afterward the little one held her and cried.

In Birmingham, Johnny Carr hobbled down the hallway to a museum conference room to tell us about the bus boycott and her friend, Rosa Parks. At 95, Johnny heads a Civil Rights group and has for 40 years running. She was hoping they’d pick a successor at that night’s meeting. (They didn’t. She’s still in charge.) After praying with us, she hobbled back out to her Buick, eased herself into the driver’s seat, and sped off.

Recounting more recent history, Jerry Mitchell at the Mississippi Courier-Ledger told us how he uncovered information and court records (some sealed for no particular reason other than to protect the guilty) that reopened cases and got convictions for some of the most violent bombers of the era. Now in their 80s, these men are living out the rest of their days in prison.

Lynne Blessing asked Jerry his motivation for the painstaking research. “Justice,” he said, then added, “And I hated the way the Ku Klux Klanners twist the words of scripture.” Fed up, he once shoved a Bible at a KKKer and said, “Show me where you get that.” He couldn’t.

Unlike with textbook accounts, we’ll remember this history, and the real people who made it.

What We Learned

1) A few people, even one individual, can impact an entire nation. We have not solved all our ills but children today in Jackson, Mississippi, and throughout the South can step foot in any public park. Where once a people were allowed to shop in department stores, they can now use the dressing rooms as well, and they have the same return policy as anyone else.

(2) Likewise a small number, even one person, can influence society for ill. We immediately think of Hitler, but the Ku Klux Klan was led by a very few people who intimidated blacks and more moderate whites alike. The 16th Street bombing was carried out by a handful with hate in their hearts.

(3) It doesn’t matter who you are, or how old. In Birmingham, it was children — teens and middle school kids — on the front lines. Adults with jobs would have suffered retaliation for demonstrating for justice. So the young emptied out of their schools in the middle of the day to march.
And the rest is history.