Sunday Focus: The Alabama Historical Culture Clash

Confederate Monument

Civil Rights Memorial

     Tourism officials in Montgomery are doing what you do when life hands you lemons. You make lemonade

     In this case the "lemons" are the fact that the city was the first capitol of the Confederate Government during the Civil War, and was ground zero for the Civil Rights Movement a century later.
      Trying to keep both of those respective camps happy requires a careful balancing act. Modern hard core Civil War folks tend not to rally around Civil Rights causes, and vis versa.
        TIME Magazine this week includes a report by a senior at The University of Mississippi about a similar dichotomy at that school:

The statue of the Confederate soldier stands within a section of campus designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark due to the riots that accompanied the enrollment of James Meredith, the university’s first black student, 52 years ago next month. Just a few hundred feet away stands a statue of Mr. Meredith. It is made of bronze, and, for now, it is free of nooses and Georgia flags.

   

  In Downtown Montgomery, a short walk will take you between the place where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederacy, to the steps of the church where Rev. Martin Luther King was pastor during the bus boycott.
     At least there have been only a few incidents of vandalism. In fact the last big one was an anti-confederacy protest.

December 16, 2007

Three white 17-year-olds from Montgomery are accused of using black paint to deface the Confederate Monument on the Capitol grounds in Montgomery. State Public Safety Director J. Christopher Murphy said Friday that each of the three had been charged with first-degree criminal mischief, a felony. Police patrolling the Capitol complex discovered Nov. 11 that the hands and faces of statues on the Confederate Monument had been painted with black paint. Black graffiti saying "N    
       Monuments---especially peace monuments---have been vandalized by centuries. And yes, there is a web site with a list here.
     State officials in Alabama wisely decided to commemorate three

great historical events together this year: The Civil Rights Movement, The Civil War, and the End of The Creek Indian War, but next year the 50th anniversary of the Selma-Montgomery March and the 60th anniversary of the bus boycott will stand alone and will receive international attention.

[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of TimLennox.com]