Birmingham, Alabama

 

I had hopes that Alabama would be more bike friendly than Mississippi and mercifully spare cyclists the dreaded rumble strips, but no such luck. It was a small consolation that the road shoulders were a bit wider and afforded the possibility of riding to the right of the strips and not out in the road as was the case in Mississippi.

The wider and smoother shoulders were a first indication of a more affluent state. It was further  reflected in towns that didn’t look like they were being abandoned in mass, as had been the case in Mississippi.  

I’m so conditioned to being in France in May, as I have been for the past seventeen years until last year, that I’ve had to remind myself from time to time that I can speak English to anyone I encounter.  But I am generally painfully aware that I’m in the United States, as I pass through one characterless, rundown town after another that reflect a woeful lack of civic pride, quite a contrast to the French.

I long for the charm of French villages, each distinguished by a caring local populace that can be seen out tending to their surroundings, spearheaded by the typical attentive mayor ever cognizant of maintaining the favor of those he serves by keeping his town as spic and span as the one down the road.  Every French town, regardless of size, is brightened by an array of flowers.  At the entry of most towns a sign announces its status as a Ville Fleurie with between one and four stars. Besides arrangements of flowers in beds, they are on display in wooden boxes hanging from window sills and on the bridges over the river that seems to bisect every French town.  

The old stone buildings most people live in all seem to be in competition for best preserved.  All have wooden shutters that rarely can be accused of needing a fresh coat of paint.  One can count on a boulangerie (bakery) and dignified town hall and public toilet.  US towns are denigrated by Dollar Stores and other franchise that are more of a blight than a beneficence.

But France does not have the libraries that the US does.  It didn’t have the gift of a wealthy benefactor like Carnegie funding libraries for any small town that wanted one.  Small town libraries are scarcely more than a room attached to a municipal building and only open for minimal hours. American libraries are a true national treasure.  Carnegie more than doubled the number of small town libraries in the beginning of the 20th century, and inspired countless others to donate the funds for a library.  He is truly the “Patron Saint of Libraries.”

Fourteen communities in Alabama took advantage of Carnegie’s largess. Ten of the libraries still stand, but none on my route to Birmingham, my first destination for the state’s lone Statue of Liberty donated by the Boy Scouts.  It had its back to the courthouse facing on to Linn Park, the site of many civil rights demonstrations in the ‘60s.  It’s the only such Statue I’ve come upon that wasn’t mounted on a pedestal, nor accompanied by a plaque explaining that it had been donated by the Boy Scouts in honor of its fortieth anniversary.  Without it being elevated one could see it was merely life-sized, some hundred inches from toes to torch.

A plaque gave the history of the mammoth courthouse built in 1931, designed by Chicago architects Holabird and Root.  Two other plaques, part of the Birmingham Civil Rights Heritage Trail, featured Martin Luther King and his time in Birmingham. King came before the court numerous times for violating state and local segregation laws and led numerous marches to the city-square block adjoining park designed by the Olmsted brothers.  Blacks were initially banned from the park.  They had other parks designated for their use.  When a federal judge ruled that Birmingham had to integrate its 67 parks, the city commissioners on January 1, 1962 voted to close them, stirring civic leaders to unseat the most bull-headed of the commissioners.

I had no need to visit the many other significant Civil Rights battle sites in Birmingham, one with a statue of snarling dogs inflicted upon marchers, as I had made their acquaintance on a visit to Birmingham six years ago with Don Jaime, who had lived through the era of desegregation and the many demonstrations, and had witnessed many of them.  He had been brainwashed as a youth to regard blacks as second class citizens.  Segregation was such a fact of life, he had no black friends, and he accepted that blacks had separate entrances to most buildings.

There was little racial mixture in Alabama in the ‘50s when he was growing up.  It was even against the law for blacks and whites to play checkers together.  Jim confessed that as a college student he was among the maddened mobs of whites hurling the n-word at black marchers led by King after the downtown church bombing.  He can hardly believe he could have behaved in such a fashion, nor can anyone who knows Jim today, an ardent activist on all fronts from poetry to critical masses. Discovering the music of Joan Baez helped cure him of his prejudices.

Just as the Civil War has not been forgotten in the South, nor has the Civil Rights movement and how harshly blacks were once treated.  Historical plaques everywhere along the road and in cities and towns recount the grave injustices blacks once endured.  The manner in which I have been treated gives no indication that blacks hold a grudge, as is much more the case in South Africa, which I can strongly attest to.  It is a dangerous place for whites.  But not the South.  I had another black accord me an act of kindness just before I left Mississippi.  I paused at an intersection to consult the GPS on my iPad.  As I studied it a grandfatherly, bearded black approached me and said, “God bless you,” and handed me a five dollar bill.