Selma

In my recent trip across the American South, we drove through Montgomery, Alabama and past Selma, which to me means only one thing.

People talk a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr., especially when the third Monday in January comes around, but for me, actually seeing one of the places where he marched taught me more than I ever knew before.  Forty-five years have gone by, but Montgomery is still the deepest of the Deep South, and by looking at those fields and breathing that air I knew that, in that place forty-five years ago, demanding black people's right to vote was, essentially, illegal.

My last post was about the importance of the law, but there are some things the law cannot provide for us.  There are in fact some rights that we have to step outside the law in order to attain.  Sometimes it's because the law says one thing, but the people in power say something else.  And sometimes it's because the law, written by the people in power, has not yet caught up to a more universal sense of justice.

I also wanted to say that when you drive through downtown Montgomery, along the MLK Expressway, you will see signs for several tourist attractions, one of them being "The First White House of the Confederacy."  I don't believe that people ever forget.