Letter from Alabama | Part 2: Bumping up against history

A bronze star marks the spot where Jefferson Davis stood on the steps of the state Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala., in February 1861 and swore to uphold the Confederacy. George Wallace stood near the same spot to be inaugurated as governor in 1963, pledging to make segregation the law of the land "forever."

Wallace was reportedly in his office but did not come out two years later when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and about 25,000 other people walked up to the Capitol at the end of the Selma to Montgomery voting-rights march. King told the crowd that day that "segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama," adding, "How long? Not long."

The "Never" button that Wallace wore on his lapel is now a museum artifact. The places where civil-rights battles were fought have become tourist attractions. "This is why we study history," says Emma Rodriguez, my 12-year-old granddaughter, "because things can change — at least on the outside."

You bump up against history of one kind or another on virtually every corner in Montgomery. The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King served as pastor from 1954-60, is a block from the Capitol. The church is located on a site that was once a slave trader's holding pen. The slave market itself was in a nearby public square, identified now by a historic marker. Across the square, another marker commemorates the bus stop where Rosa Parks' arrest in 1955 prompted the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott.

A few blocks away is the Civil Rights Memorial, commissioned by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1989, designed by famed architect and artist Maya Lin, and built with money won in civil lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan. The memorial includes an inverted cone of black granite, inscribed with the names of 40 people who were killed during the civil-rights movement between 1954 and 1968. A thin film of water flows over the circular "table," inviting touch. Behind it is a 40-foot-long wall carved with a biblical quotation used by King in his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963:"... until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Lin has said she hopes the monument will inspire people "to appreciate how far the country has come in its quest for equality, and to consider how far it has to go." In an example of how far there is to go, armed guards patrol the monument and the adjacent Civil Rights Memorial Center. Visitors to the center have to pass through airport-like security. "There are a lot of people who don't like what we do here," one guard explains.

It's a sobering thought for Emma. "People made these museums so we could remember what things used to be like, but then they have to have guards because some people want to tear it down," she says. "That's scary."

Evidence of progress can be seen in Birmingham, which Martin Luther King once described as the most segregated city in America. Images of the police dogs and fire hoses that were unleashed on demonstrators in Birmingham have been seared into our collective consciousness. King was among the more than 3,000 people — many of them children — who were arrested during a series of protests here in April and May 1963. The following September, a bomb exploded outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young choirgirls and injuring 22 other people. The nation's revulsion at the violence in "Bombingham" contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most far-reaching civil-rights legislation in history.

Today, the rebuilt church is part of the Birmingham Civil Rights District, which also includes the Civil Rights Institute (a state-of-the-art museum and research center) and the park where many of the demonstrations began. The museum's exhibits include the bars from the cell where King wrote his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," a rusted drinking fountain labeled "Colored," and copies of race-related ordinances, such as "Section 597 of the General Code of the City of Birmingham: Negroes and White Persons Not to Play Together."

Outside the Sixteenth Street Church, we meet the Rev. Solomon Crenshaw, pastor of the nearby Broad Street Baptist Church. He was at his own pulpit 45 years ago when the Sixteenth Street Church was bombed. "I'm just so glad that I've lived to see the changes that have taken place," he says. "We've come a long way from the old way of doing things. There is a breath of freedom that's blown in." He pauses, then adds: "But it's not that strong."

What does Emma think he means by that? "Some people still think they're better than other people."