Miles total: 2700
Today, we left the French Quarter very early to travel to Selma, AL. In Selma, we met with Sam Walker, activist and tour guide at the National Voting Rights Museum, who told us more about the 1965 Voting Rights march and Bloody Sunday. After touring the museum, we marched over the Edmund Pettus bridge as the marchers did en route from Selma to Montgomery. We also visited several other related sites in Selma (such as Brown's Chapel AME, which became the headquarters of the movement in Selma and where MLK delivered several speeches) and the sites of the campgrounds where the marchers stayed overnight on their 5 day march to Montgomery. (At the time, the land used for their camping was owned by local Black farmers). We drove along Highway 80 into Montgomery, which is the same road the marchers took. In response to these actions (and several violent murders), the Voting Rights Act was passed in April 1965. We also saw the newly opened Lowdes County Interpretive Center, another Civil Rights related center in what was once one of the most dangerous southern counties for Civil Rights workers.
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