“Throwing shade” on someone is bad. So is calling something “shady.”
But in July in Alabama, the shade is where you want to be.
Once my Amazing Mom had finished her track meet and we’d all gone out to brunch (at Waffle House, where else?), the five of us–me, parents, sister, brother-in-law–found ourselves with several hours of free time before their flight back to North Carolina, and nowhere in Huntsville’s 95-degree humidity that we wanted to be.
We’d already gone to see the big rockets. The local botanical garden looked pretty online, but most of its pathways were out in full sun. No thanks.
Then my sister found us Monte Sano State Park–a little mountain just outside downtown Huntsville.
There’s nothing like a mature hardwood forest for real shade, and this one was up a thousand feet or so–easily 10 degrees cooler than town. The park even boasted those wonderful New Deal-era CCC cabins The Mate and I always loved to discover on our Road Trips.
We strolled; we lingered. We sweated a LOT less than we would have, anywhere else in Alabama that day…
…thanks to the shade.
Mid-afternoon, well satisfied, I dropped my fam off at the Huntsville airport and continued on an errand of my own. Yes, I could have booked my flight from there, but the connection via Birmingham worked better for me. And Birmingham carries a weight of history that I wanted to feel again.
Except it was Sunday: all museums closed. So I made another plan. I decided to take a 90-minute detour through the small town of Anniston, where I knew the Freedom Riders Memorial would still be accessible, Sunday or no.
Not pictured: the beautiful, green, rolling lushness of the Alabama hills I drove through alone, wishing I could take photos with my eyes.
Also not pictured: the Sisters in Law podcast I was listening to, in honor of Professor Joyce Vance, my favorite legal explainer, who lives and teaches in Birmingham. (Click her name to follow her “Civil Discourse” Substack!)
My first view of Anniston reminded me of the narration in To Kill a Mockingbird: “an old town…a tired old town.”
The memorial was tucked into an inconsequential alley, next to what had once been the bus station.
Inside the alley, the exhibit came to life.
Each panel of the bus explained the events leading up to that spring day in 1961. I read them all, but for purposes of brevity, didn’t include the whole background to the event, which you can read about here.
I’ll let the panels speak for themselves, assuming you can expand them on your device.
Did I learn anything new from this exhibit? Only the small fact that the actual firebombing of the bus had occurred a few miles outside of town–after the local cops made the KKK mob let the bus leave, only to abandon driver and passengers to their fate as the KKK followed.
They had already slashed the bus’s tires. They knew it wouldn’t get far.
I still can’t comprehend how no one died that day.
But what I DID get from standing in that (shady) alley: chills. Thinking of the bravery of those young volunteers, Black and white, sitting in that Greyhound as the mob surrounded them. Yes, they were all well trained. Yes, they knew what they were signing up for, what they were up against.
But who, in the moment, is really ready to die by violence?
I drove off into the Alabama evening, shaken by its past…and by the shade that past still casts on our present.
I needed a walk in the woods.
I want to thank the foot soldiers of the Movement, and the people who keep their story alive. We’re going to need all your grit in the shady days ahead.
Wing's World 