Tuskegee, Alabama



I was denied entry to another fenced-in college campus, Tuskegee University,  due to Covid-restrictions and had to be content with seeing just the backside of its former Carnegie Library. It was across the street from the home of Booker T. Washington, one of the founders of this all-black college dating to 1881.  It is still going strong with an enrollment of 2,600 and one of the top five veterinary schools in the country according to a chatty security guard.  

When I told him I had just come from Montgomery and it’s Carnegie Library, he asked, “Did you see the hanging museum?”  I didn’t know anything about it.  

“You really missed something,” he went on.  “It lists over 4,000 blacks who were hung all over the South. It’s a very powerful experience.  You’ve got to go.  It’s a shame you missed it.”

“That’s a thing of the past, isn’t it?” I asked.

“The  Klan knows better than to try anything like that now,  but there’s still research going on and they’re always adding new names of victims they discover.  It’s just three years old and it’s actual name is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, but people call it the Hanging Museum because that’s what it’s all about.  People compare it to Holocaust and Apartheid Museums.  Its really an amazing experience. You wouldn’t be the same if you ever saw it.”

Then he asked if I knew about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black pilots to fly for the US Air Force in World War II.  Nearly a thousand of them were trained here in Tuskegee. Several movies have been made about them including “Red Tails” from 2012 written by Ridley Scott and produced by George Lucas.

While we talked at the gated entry he had to check the temperature of someone driving on to the campus, but there was no permitting me.  Tuskegee  was my fourth Carnegie in Alabama on this trip and the final one, wrapping up another state.  I had gotten to the eight others still standing of the original nineteen on three previous rides across the state, two with Don Jaime in 2014 and 2015 and last year after my return from Brazil, biking from Miami to New Orleans along the Gulf.  Now it’s on to Georgia where I hope to gather fourteen more, nearly doubling the thirteen I’ve seen so far in these travels.

I was lucky a plaque in front of the Main Library in Montgomery gave the location of the Carnegie a few blocks away, as once again Wikipedia gave the wrong address.  And I couldn’t have asked a librarian as the libary along with its nine branches had yet to reopen.  I stopped by a branch library on the way in to the city and shared its WiFi with three others sitting outside it in a residential neighborhood.

All the closed libraries were an indication of how quiet Montgomery was.  No one was around the Carnegie in the heart of the downtown.  The grand building was now a property appraisal office.

I stopped in the shade of a forest just off the road on my way from Montgomery to Tuskegee to take a break from the sun and the 90 degree heat.  As ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich and read the thick tourist brochure I had picked up in Selma, a car pulled off the road in front of me and a middle-aged woman rolled down her window and asked me if I’d like a cold bottle of water.  I hopped to my feet and grabbed it before it could start warming up.  Ten minutes later another car pulled up and another middle-aged woman said she just bought some oatmeal-raisin cookies that she shouldn’t have and wondered if I’d like them.  She didn’t need to ask twice.  They’d evidently been an impulse buy, a bag of three marked down to 69 cents from a dollar, that she was regretting.  Lucky for me.  If it had been later in the day, the forest behind me would have made a perfect place to slip into for the night.

No one forced money on me as in Mississippi, but I found way more change in Alabama along the road, and mostly silver.  There was just one other offering of food during my week in the state, a young woman with a young girl in tow handed me a bag with a cold bottle of Gatorade and a ham sandwich as I sat outside a Walmart eating a bowl of shredded wheat with chocolate milk, merely saying “This is for you.”  

I am always touched by these acts of kindness and  heartened to bring out the good in others.  I’d much rather though inspire people to ride their bikes than to give,  but there’s not much hope in that.  I’ve come over a thousand miles in my two weeks on the road and have hardly seen another cyclist or even a bike.  Some of the cities have had scooter rentals, but those do little to lift my spirits.