George W. Carver's grave

So the way this posting from my iPhone works is that I have to send the pictures over in separate posts. . .which means that I have all these posts and we are only on the second day of the trip.  Four more days to go.  

I've already written a bit about how we started our day.  A little more about the day.  We ate brunch in Atlanta at the Thumbs Up cafe.  Yummy.  My waffle had an imprint of a thumb on it.  Afterwards, many of us went into the little shop next store to purchase dessert.  There were homemade sweet potato pies, pecan pies, key lime cake. . .well, I had a homemade brownie and it was delicious.

If you are reading this blog then you probably  aren't at all interested about what I ate. . .but it was so good I had to write about it.  We left Atlanta headed for Alabama where we will spend the next 3 days.  On the way to Selma, where we are now, we stopped in Tuskegee.  There we spent some time at the Tuskegee Air Field.  There is a picture of some of the Airmen in an earlier post.  The historic site needs quite a bit of work and I will be excited to return to it when some work is done.  Right now it's pretty much just a trailer with some posters and a 15 minute movie.  When you go outside you can see the air field and the brick buildings which were built by students from Tuskegee Institute.

I learned the most today about Tuskegee and the roots of the school and Booker T. Washington.  Booker T. wanted the students/black people/Alabamans. . .to be self-sufficient so many of the buildings on the campus of Tuskegee University were built by the students.  At the university we spent a great deal of time at the George Washington Carver museum.  GWC is now definitely one of my heroes.  As some of you might know, when I was about 8 or 9 doing my first teaching job with the kids next door (Marylena and Bumpy) I wrote a song about George Washington Carver to teach to them.

The lyrics were:  

George Washington Carver was a Black man

He was wizard of Tuskegee

But most of all he was a peanut user

He used it for shampoo (shampoooo)

and shaving cream (shaving creaaaaam)

and peanut butter (peanut butter. . .everything. . .)

Don't laugh.  I was only 8!  However, what I learned today is that my passion for teaching was also GWC's passion.  He really loved his work.  He loved learning and painting and growing things and teaching his students experientially.  Just like me :)  

We watched a couple of movies about Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver before walking around campus a bit.  (Pictures posted of the Chapel on campus and the grave sites of Washington and Carver).  One of my favorite facts about GWC was that his middle name was not Washington.  He started using a W for his middle initial because he didn't have one.  HE never used Washington.  When someone would say, "Does that W stand for Washington?"  He would respond with something like, "Well, it could!"  I thought that was neat since I have kind of done the same thing and created a middle name for myself. :)

On the way to Selma we watched some of Eyes on the Prize, the part about Bloody Sunday.  We finished the clip right as we were crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge.  Of course I missed the bridge because watching the movie clip had made me a little carsick and I had my eyes closed.  Never fear though, we are going back tomorrow!  The clip from the movie was quite moving.  I had a hard time watching what people went through. . .beatings, being ridiculed, spit on. . .for rights that we take for granted.  And at that moment all I could think about were young black men and women who just don't understand and appreciate the struggles that our ancestors went through for us.  And I also thought how proud those people on that bridge would be right now of Barack Obama. 

Selma is sad.  It reminds me a bit of Dunn, NC.  There is a SuperWalMart, of course, and a mall (which is smaller than the Reidsville Mall believe it or not.)  But it is just sad.  The buildings are crumbling and it just looks like nobody lives here.  No landscaping or welcome signs.  It's just here.  The only place for us to eat was a Chinese buffet in a pink building that had a sign on each table saying if you got too much food and did not eat it they would charge a 35% surcharge.  They also had a Winn Dixie and a Central Park. . .two businesses that I thought were now non-existent. . .maybe Selma's Winn Dixie and Central Park didn't get the memo.  It felt like we stepped back in time 20 years when we arrived.  

When we returned from dinner we had an enlightening debriefing session where we shared stories about issues of discomfort around race issues.  I really enjoyed the conversation.  I really enjoyed the day.  It's hard to believe that it's only been two days.  We've done so much.  This is such a cool experience.  And there's so much more to go.  

Stay tuned. . .

~tgw