| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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The museum is divided into sections: Unrelenting Struggle, Strategies for Change, Organizations, Protest, Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Sit-Ins, Freedom Rides, Ole Miss, 'Project C' Birmingham, March on Washington, Freedom Summer, Selma, March Against Fear, Chicago, and Memphis.
Interesting note: Justice John M. Harland was the only Southerner on the Supreme Court for Plessy v. Ferguson (which re-affirmed segregation in 1896, and he was also the only dissenter, saying, 'The Constitution is color-blind.'
At the end of all this is a photograph of a Chinese student in Tiananmen Square wearing a shirt saying 'We Shall Overcome.' And as you leave, there is the quotation, 'A little rebellion, now and then is a good thing... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.' (Thomas Jefferson, 1787).
I found it discouraging, if not unexpected, that there were more people just hanging around the gates of Graceland than were at the National Civil Rights Museum. I can't say it was unexpected, but it was a bit depressing.
I also found it a bit depressing that the gift shop had a lot more along the lines of T-shirts, magnets, and hats than books, tapes, or posters about the Civil Rights movement, or even about Black history in the United States in general. They had sort of your basic 'one-foot shelf': Douglass's autobiography, Washington's Up from Slavery, something by DuBois (I think it was his essay on the 'Talented Tenth'), I Have a Dream (selected speeches and writings by the Reverend Martin Luther King), Richard Wright's Native Son, and maybe a couple of other books. They didn't even seem to have the Autobiography of Malcolm X. And given the heavy word content of the museum, I would have loved to see a book of all the quotations used there. (A book with all the text would be a terrific resource, but I suppose they might feel it would keep people from coming.)
After this we went back to Beale Street and found a parking place (the same one we used yesterday!) so we could see A. Schwab's Dry Goods Store-and a strange store it was, too.
As described by the walking tour guide, 'Probably the most famous store on Beale Street today, Abraham Schwabs' dry goods store has been on Beale since 1876, and not much has changed about Schawbs since then. Voodoo potions and old music memorabilia as well as cheap items can be found. L. Bauer and Sons dry goods, and a Piggly Wiggly resided here from 1865 until 1924. ... Not much has changed here since the doors opened in 1876. This place is a wild combination of a vintage, turn-of-the-century store-complete with old creaky floors, antique cash registers-and a voodoo supply store, with enough goods to fill any voodoo shopping list. This store can even be fun for those that hate shopping. Free tours, and a free souvenir to every visitor. Men's pants size to size 74, and women's pants to size 60 (ouch!).' We got three caps (two at $1 each and I 'splurged' on one that had the Schwab logo on it for $4) and a small bottle of some potion or other (it seemed like the perfect souvenir-the only contender was a bar of Octagon soap). The free gift seemed to be the two postcards of Schwab's I got: one of an old photograph of it, one of the present. Since these would have been only ten cents each, it's not exactly extravagant on their part. The mezzanine has all sorts of old paraphernalia and goods from around 1900 jumbled together-I assume that's the museum. Cool place!
We drove past the Pink Palace, a city museum in a moderately striking building (though compared to some in Memphis, pretty tame). The traffic lights here seem sequenced so that you have to stop every couple of blocks or so. That takes some planning on their part.
After resting up a bit in the motel, we went to Arnold's Bar-B-Q for dinner. Although the slaw seemed to have been made in a blender, the ribs were excellent.
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Well, at breakfast we got to talking to someone else and found out that the 'Memphis Belle' was viewable on Mud Island. Had we known, we could have gone there one of the two previous days, since it's open until 7 PM. Unfortunately, it doesn't open in the morning until 10 AM, and we didn't want to hang around that long. (Why this isn't a starred attraction in the AAA book is beyond me-it's buried in the description of Mud Island.)
After working our way through the traffic congestion on I-55, we crossed the Mississippi River and got on I-40 in Arkansas. The speed limit here is 70 miles per hour (it's been a long time since I've seen that!), but the road is not at all smooth, being some reddish material that must be quite old. Our car, loaded as it is, not to mention being twelve years old, seems to prefer 65 miles per hour rather than 70 anyway.
We arrived at Little Rock around 10:15 AM, and after much searching found Central High. This is the school that was so prominent in 1957 when President Eisenhower had to call in the National Guard to integrate it. However, to find it we had to resort to finding a phone book, looking up the address (1500 South Park Street), and then sort of guessing where that would be (drive down to 15th Street and then just drive along until you find it). If you're looking for it with a less than complete map, go to 14th Street and drive west; it's a couple of blocks west of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. (I hope the irony of this is not lost on anyone.) 15th Street doesn't run as far as Park, and it any case they were in the process of building a 'Central High Visitors Center and Museum' on the corner of 14th Street and Park Street. (If you see it when it's done, I'd be curious to hear what it's like.)
In spite of this museum-building, we appeared to be the only tourists who were here at this time. I suppose after the museum is finished, it may be more noted in tour books and such. To me, it seems a much more important landmark than a lot of what does get mentioned. (Someone somewhere must have put together a 'Civil Rights Tour Guide,' similar to the Civil War Sourcebook we are using. Or should. We're cobbling our trip together from bits and pieces gleaned from various sources. I hear there is a 'Black Heritage Tour' brochure for Alabama which I hope to pick up when we get there, but that's just Alabama.)
After this, we drove on to Hot Springs on I-30 and AR-70. Hot Springs (http://www.hotspringsar.com/info/info.htm) is billed (no pun intended) as 'Bill Clinton's Hometown' (http://www.hotspringsar.com/info/clinton/clinton/clinton.htm). While he was born in Hope, Arkansas, he moved to Hot Springs as a young child, and so both towns get to claim him. Of course, most of the sites listed as 'Bill Clinton sites' for Hot Springs are things like the Malco Theater, where he and his friends went to the movies (except it isn't a movie theater any more), or the soda fountain where he had sodas (except it isn't a soda fountain any more). This strikes me as a desperate attempt to have more than just the two houses he lived in on the list.
After checking in to the Quality Inn (where the clerk seemed determined to find some sort of discount she could give us-we ended up with the corporate discount because we're with Lucent Technologies), we went to the Mid-America Museum ($5 minus 10% AAA discount). This is the same sort of hands-on museum as the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Mid-America Museum did have a couple of different exhibits. One, a temporary one, was an exhibit on dinosaurs and 'dinamation.' The other was a series of machines build by Sir Rowland Emett which were props from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.' (There was also a larger machine of the same type built by Emett which was not from the movie, but which was the centerpiece in the entrance hall.) The museum, like other classic science museums, seems to have been inspired by the quotation from Einstein that they displayed: 'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.'
After this we returned to Hot Springs itself and walked around the downtown along Bath House Row (more on this tomorrow). After resting up a bit, we went out to Cajun Boilers from dinner, where I discovered that crawfish were not in season, so I had boiled shrimp and bluepoint crab fingers. Yum!
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We were up early so we drove the two mountain loops of Hot Springs National Park before the Fordyce Bath House Visitors Center opened. Hot Springs National Park is definitely a strange National Park. It has a city right smack in the middle of it. It has only two short driving routes, and only a few hiking trails (and one of those is a paved sidewalk behind the bath houses!). And it all centers around bathing.
At 9 AM, the Fordyce Bath House opened. This is a restored, but not operational, bath house. There is still one bath house operating on the original 'Bath House Row,' the Bucknell, but several downtown hotels also offer the same services (baths, steam cabinets, hot packs, massages, etc.).
There used to be guided tours of the Fordyce, but now there is just a self-guided tour. I suppose this is part of the government cut-backs on National Parks.
We left Hot Springs around 10 AM and drove down AR-7 and I-30 to Hope AR. AR-7 is supposed to be one of America's ten most scenic roads (or some such) but, while it was moderately attractive, it didn't seem any more scenic than a lot of other roads we've been on. On I-30, I saw something that was either a dead armadillo or a piece of truck tire-it was hard to tell at 70 miles per hour.
Hope, Arkansas, has a small Visitors Center in the restored train station where you can see pictures of President Clinton as a child, watch a video about him, and pick up a copy of the 'Presidential Driving Tour' of Hope (which includes his two homes, his school, and the cemetery where his family is buried). It also had items from the railroad and a video about that as well.
We did the driving tour. I think you can actually go in to one of the homes, but since it was raining (heavily at times), we decided not to bother. After this, we drove on to Dallas on I-30. As is usual on this trip, we found ourselves in a traffic jam due to construction. (To be fair, not all the traffic jams were due to construction. A couple were because of accidents, and some had no discernible cause.)
After checking in to the Motel 6 and getting a paper for the movie listings, we drove up to Carrollton for dinner at Pho 79 (Vietnamese noodle soup again), and then saw Event Horizon.
August 23: After breakfast at Grandy's, we drove out to Terrell for the Silent Wings Museum, which depicts the use of gliders in World War II. Contrary to what you might think, they were not used because they were silent, but because they could carry heavy payloads and land almost anywhere. So they served almost like giant parachutes, landing jeeps, equipment, and personnel behind enemy lines to build airstrips where larger planes could land. They were used primarily in eight campaigns: Sicily (1943), Burma (1944), Normandy (1944), Southern France (1944), Holland (Marketgarden) (1944), the Battle of the Bulge (1944), Wesel (1945), and Luzon (1945).
The museum has a nice library for anyone wanting to do research. |
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