I wish I had pictures to share with you about this museum but we were not allowed to take pictures here. Here is what I gleaned from my experience there.
The museum is on the spot that used to be full of slave stalls used to hold slaves until it was their turn on the auction block. As you enter the museum you here stories of how the slave trade was handled in Montgomery. How the slaves arrived on ships sailing up the Alabama river where they were walked up to the slave warehouse. I proceeded through the exhibits by walking down a long dark hall where there was the appearance of cells with women slaves telling their story through holograms. Continuing on, I entered a large room with a time line of slavery and the statics associated with how many slaves came from Africa and various examples of actual “slave sale” announcements.
Next came the after war slavery items: the black codes, the criminal leases, and the lynchings. Black codes were a certain set of codes that only the black population need to observe. An example of some such codes is laziness because a negro could not show a paper stating that he a job. This violation of the “law” would cause the man to be arrested and given a fine. When he could not pay his fine, he would be sold to the highest bidder and “indentured” to pay off the fine. His sentence term could be as much as five or ten years depending on all the various fees attached to the fine once all was said and done. He would then be worked in the same manner as if he was a slave: over worked, starved, no medical treatment, and no pay. There did not have to be a reason for a man to be arrested. I could have been as little as someone with money needed some cheap labor so he hired the police officer to find him someone. Alabama made a lot of money on conscripting out such “criminals” to plantation owners, mines, and factories.
Black people were lynched for whatever someone wanted to lynch them for. Lynching involved hanging by the neck but it far worst than just that. Burning, brutalizing, torturing, degrading, and maiming were all part of lynching. Mary Turner…look her up. Although I read about her lynching in “White Rage” by Carol Anderson a while ago, I still have a hard time writing about it. I did find reference to her at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and posted a picture of that reference in my blog about that museum. One did not need any legal recourse to lynch someone. Perpetrators were not punished. Here is an interesting note. Although several attempts were made in Congress to make formal bands on lynching in the past, we still do not have an anti-lynching law in the United States.
The Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr., what happened at Selma and Birmingham with water canons on children, dogs on children, and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing all brought about change, some positive and some negative. Once could say that the new anti-segregation and non-discrimination laws opened up the Country for African Americans but my claim here is that, while positive steps that I applaud, racism did not leave the US it simply went underground and shielded itself with the laws of this land. Racism not attaches itself to war. You know, the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on immigration, etc. Black and brown people have had the label of criminal element strapped on to their back since before they were born. Further detail on this and mass incarceration will come later. This is a blog and I do want to save some of this stuff for my book.
By the way, the down town area where the museum is used to be a hub for slavery markets where slaves were auctioned and slave investors made rich. The area today contains the “Alley” or a rather central area for fooderies. Several large hotel chains can be found in the neighborhood and there is a river walk that we will explore tomorrow. We may make it to Selma but there is so much to see around here.
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