In celebration of the lives of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, we had Shabbat evening services at Congregation Emanu-El in Atlanta with members of local Methodist and Baptist churches. It was a statement of solidarity that made us all feel how much we could do when united with other communities. In Birmingham, we visited the 16th Street Baptist Church where four young African-American girls died in the notorious church bombing. We stood on the ground where 35 years earlier police had sprayed protesters with fire hoses and attacked them with German shepherds, because they wanted to go to use the same bathroom as whites and vote in expression of their constitutional rights. The Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham makes the movement as tangible as possible to those who were never a part of it.
Visitors moves through life-sized segregated classrooms, lunch counters, and buses.
At the end of the tour, you stand in a room with a cobblestone floor and a pictorial crowd surrounds you. On our trip, many people were moved to tears. According to those on our tour who had been to Selma before, it has not changed much, and this sentiment is not offered with nostalgia. Because of creative re-districting, Selma, AL has had the same mayor since 1963. It has a predominantly white city council, while the majority of the population is black.