Birmingham and Montgomery

Today was another rainy day, but in a way, I think it helped us all focus a little bit better on what we are learning. This morning we headed to Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham for a walking tour of the park. We had a tour guide explain to us all of the statues and why they were put there. Kelly Ingram Park was the sight of the protests in Birmingham after the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist church where four little girls were killed. The park is right across the street from the church and we were able to see it from our tour. After that, our tour guide joined us on the bus and showed us around downtown Birmingham. Then we got to eat lunch at Mrs.B's--which was very good southern soul food!

Then, we headed to Montgomery. On the way in the bus we watched the History Channel documentary "King." Congressman John Lewis was one of the people in the video that was interviewed and it was pretty powerful to know we had just met him yesterday.Once we got to town, we toured the Rosa Parks museum at Troy University. Even though I have been to the museum before and have thought a lot about what Rosa Parks did, it still inspires me that all of those people were willing to be so inconvienced for over a year in order to prove their point that the segregation that was taking place in Montgomery was wrong.

After the tour, we headed to the local mall for dinner. Inside the mall, there was an ice skating rink, where I attempted to ice skate for the first time in my life--after spending most of my life in Wisconsin, it is crazy that I first ice skated in Alabama!!!