Author: bigdiff

Women’s History Month

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Women’s contributions to our history have too often been ignored or downplayed. Several of the official national park sites primarily focus on telling women’s history, but the park service maintains a far longer list of women who deserve more recognition. The park service says that ‘women’s history can be found in all parks’, but that’s another way of saying that women’s history is secondary in most parks.

First listed are official park sites that focus on telling important women’s history well, and it includes suffragettes, abolitionists, business women, laborers, and political leaders.

Second is a very incomplete list of historically important women often mentioned at national park sites (links go to NPS articles), but without the recognition of their own official park sites. The list below has suffragettes, scientists, and women who fought for the rights of others, and all who must be remembered. A few of these are currently being considered for park recognition, along with a Votes for Women History Trail. My apologies for those I know I’m leaving off the list below.

Who was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize? The only woman to win the Medal of Honor? Our first Congresswoman, elected before women could vote? If there’s a woman on this list you haven’t heard about, please do yourself a favor and click her link below.

Many famous women also are at rest in Arlington National Cemetery, including astronauts, code-breakers, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and a Supreme Court Justice. But there’s just one memorial—Military Women’s Memorial—for all the women who served in war, despite the diverse stories of women in the Revolution, War of 1812, US-Mexican War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, WASPs, and the rest. We all need to do a better job of remembering and telling Women’s History, with more official, public recognition.

Driving Across the Border ¡Bienvenidos a México!

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Welcome to Mexico! Above is the statue of Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla, the parish priest who on 16 September 1810 cried for independence—Grito de Dolores—in front of his church in Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo in Guanajuato) sparking Mexican Independence. Mondays for now are World Heritage Sites, while eclectic Thursdays still include US park posts.

How to Drive Across the Border from US to Mexico

This post will cover my border crossing experience, including getting a permit for my car, and I hope it helps others who may be planning a similar trip.

I crossed the border at Puente Anzalduas, near McAllen Texas. I chose this place for several reasons. McAllen is a nice city with all the conveniences. There’s a supercharger in McAllen and another one 85 miles away in Mexico. This border crossing has everything I need to legally drive my car in Mexico, all in one room, with plenty of parking, and it isn’t too crowded. The bridge allows an easy trip around the city of Reynosa, and quickly puts me on the toll highway directly to my route to Mexico City. Even though I drove from California, it’s faster to drive through Texas on the freeway at 80 mph than to drive tollways in Mexico, especially as the supercharger network isn’t nationwide in Mexico yet. I recommend this crossing if you’re planning on driving to Mexico City, especially in a Tesla!

I found a lot of wrong information (see below) about driving across the border, which caused me delays and frustration. If you’re just driving in Baja California or to Rocky Point or just along the border inside Mexico, you don’t need any paperwork. But if you want to drive elsewhere, then here’s the real story: first, my recent experience, and then, all my failures. Read and learn!

I crossed the border at around 9:30 am last Tuesday (27 February 2024), and there was virtually no wait. US Border Patrol checked my car, and then I drove across the bridge with a $3.50 toll. On the Mexico side of the border, take the left lane, since you need to declare your vehicle. If you miss the turn (like me), stay left and turn sharp left to go behind the buildings. Either way you end up in the same place, the Aduana, or Customs office. There’s a line of cars here that arrived from the other direction who are waiting to return their permits at the kiosk. Ignore them, park, and walk around to find the front door.

Customs is there to collect taxes on goods you import, including your car. But, since you’re just using your car temporarily during your visit before leaving with it, you don’t have to pay taxes. Customs checked my vehicle, including taking a photo of the VIN, and then they checked that I was the registered owner. California’s registration card includes my name, address, VIN and plate, and I had both my current card and my new one effective next week. Satisfied, they told me to walk across the room to Immigration.

Immigration is there to admit you into the country. These days, Americans like me can visit Mexico for up to 180 days without paperwork. But, since I need a permit for my car, they make an exception, give me an entry card to fill out, and they issue the 180 day form (FMM) for 717 pesos ($42) on my credit card. Satisfied, I walk back across the room to the copy desk, where they charge me $1 for a copy of my passport, my new FMM, and my registration cards. The copies are for the final step, the Banjercito.

The Banjercito is the government bank that issues the official vehicle permit that you must show at highway checkpoints. Here, they’re in the same room, right between Customs and Immigration desks, so they’ve already seen me walking back and forth. The permit proves that your identity, vehicle ownership and temporary status in the country have already been thoroughly checked by the right authorities, and the permit (TIP) contains all the relevant information. After signing several forms and providing my contact details, they took $468.30 (8,000 pesos) on my credit card, but supposedly I get almost all of that back when I return the permit. (When you leave Mexico, hand over the permit at the Banjercito kiosk and either cancel for a refund or tell them you intend to reuse it before it expires).

Satisfied, I drove deep into Mexico. I was stopped by the National Guard highway patrol twice on my first day, and all they want to see is this permit before quickly sending me on my way. I hope this all seems logical to you and clears up some common confusion, especially for first time drivers to Mexico. Plenty of folks do this every day, so you can too. But you might want to learn from my mistakes.

What Not To Do

Don’t cross from California or western Arizona if you’re driving throughout Mexico. From the Baja Peninsula to Puerto Peñasco and the Lukeville Arizona crossing, Americans enjoy a document free zone, so don’t expect the Mexican officials to issue documentation for elsewhere in Mexico, after they eliminated all the documents. If you really want to take the ferry from La Paz, then why not do that on the way back? It’s theoretically possible to get the paperwork to drive from Baja to the rest of Mexico, but in practice, I found it didn’t work this year.

Don’t park on the US side and walk across to get documents for your vehicle. They want to see your vehicle and check the VIN. Again, it may be possible, but you’re depending on officials giving you a break, which you may or may not deserve. At San Ysidro California, I walked across the border a couple weeks ago to ask for documents, but they didn’t have anyone there during working hours midweek that could issue the paperwork. I spent over an hour in line in Tijuana waiting to walk back.

Don’t cross at some remote location or in the middle of a busy city, especially if it’s your first time. I crossed last year at a tiny place west of El Paso, but the Banjercito was closed (again, midday, midweek). Juarez, across the border from El Paso, is a big city, and I found it difficult to drive around and park, before walking the streets looking for various government offices that I knew little about. Laredo Texas is across from Nuevo Laredo, which is also a busy city crossing. The bridges each have different traffic rules and allow different vehicles, and there are precious few parking spaces at Customs, if you’re lucky enough to be in the correct lane. Otherwise you’re driving and walking around in a strange city. You want to find a border crossing that handles everything in one place, with parking, without too much traffic, and without city traffic driving.

Don’t go to a Mexican Consulate in the US. I went to San Bernardino, and they looked at me like I was an alien. They only handle paperwork like that for an hour a day after lunch on certain days of the week and only for residents of the county and not for neighboring counties and they only give paperwork for students and others who need long term temporary residency and they need bank statements and photos and two dozen other documents. Didn’t I know that I don’t need paperwork to visit Mexico normally? I know there’s a web page that claims you can make an appointment at various consulates, but it doesn’t work.

Don’t try to get your documents online. I hired a company to get my documents, and I had to demand my money back when they couldn’t deliver. Then I tried to use official websites. I got far enough to create accounts at two agencies, upload documents, pay a fee and choose my crossing date and place, but then I didn’t receive anything. And when I tried contacting them through the email and websites, I got an automated response saying “sorry, we can’t help you.” I’m never getting that fee refunded.

Even if you can get your documents online, at some point maybe two months in advance, what if you are delayed by a day or the crossing that you picked is closed (as happened twice to me)? And when you get there, you still need to get your VIN & registration checked by customs, you still need your FMM checked and stamped, you still need to make a copy of your stamped FMM, and you still need to show everything to the Banjercito, who will still want to see the original documents too. The folks next to me had done everything online, and I had done nothing. But I finished faster, because they had someone with them who translated everything. I just pointed, used simple English, and handed over my credit card.

Don’t make three copies of everything. I needed one black and white copy of my passport, one of my registration, and one of my FMM. I didn’t need three copies of anything. Nobody looked at my Mexican car insurance. Nobody looked at my car title. I wasted several trips to the UPS store and Office Depot making copies of documents that I never used. There’s no way to avoid making a copy of your FMM at the border, so you might as well just wait until they tell you what copies they need.

Plan your route and pick a good crossing point, but don’t drive yourself crazy. Culture shock, anxiety, official warnings and anti-Mexican horror stories made me overthink everything. I read that Columbia Bridge near Laredo was a great place to cross, since it’s one of the few places where you enter into Nuevo León. But when I checked the map, I would still have to drive back through Tamaulipas on a much longer route. Eventually I picked the shorter straight route above. Take your time, travel by daylight, watch for speed-bumps, and be patient. Oh, and have fun!

Black History Month

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Nina Simone on the march from Selma to Montgomery, with Harry Belafonte lower right.

Black History is about much more than emancipation and education. Beyond the basic rights to liberty and literacy, Americans have a right to pursue happiness. All year long, the national park service celebrates those who broke the barriers that denied black people their full rights as citizens.

The African Burial Ground predates our country, includes both free and slave, and is today a powerful symbol of the right to belong, be recognized and be remembered. New Philadelphia, Illinois, was the first town in American officially founded by an ex-slave in 1836. Camp Nelson became a focal point for escaped slaves during the Civil War, both as refugees deserving help and as soldiers with a right to fight in uniform. Nicodemus, Kansas, 1877, is the oldest black settlement west of the Mississippi, and it still lives. Jazz began before the turn of the century in New Orleans. In 1903, Charles Young, born a slave, became the first black national park superintendent, and in 1917 became the first black Army Colonel (surpassing Dr Alexander Augusta, Bvt. Lt. Col. during the Civil War). 

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 sparked the creation of the NAACP, illustrating both the danger of race hatred and the need for African American advancement. In 1911, Maggie Walker, daughter of a slave, became the first African American woman to found and run a bank, among her many civic accomplishments in Richmond, Virginia, and nationally. In April 1939 after being refused the right to sing elsewhere, Marion Anderson made national news singing at the Lincoln Memorial.

WWII brought new opportunities, including employment for African American women among the Rosie the Riveters who built our fleets and the Tuskegee Airmen who helped turn around the war by defending our bombers over Germany. Tragically, segregation in the military led to the Port Chicago disaster in 1944, which in turn led to desegregation in the military. 

Eisenhower was President in 1955, and America was a very conservative, 88% white, 95% Christian country. Still, when Mamie Till-Mobley’s boy was brutally murdered in Mississippi, she shocked the conscience of the nation with his open casket, sparking the Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, black and white Freedom Riders rode buses to integrate interstate travel, lunch counters and restrooms, but were attacked by “Citizens Councils for Racial Integrity”: the KKK. Despite school desegregation, Normandy Veteran Medgar Evers was denied law school admittance due to his race, so he worked with the NAACP on desegregation, civil rights protests and an investigation into Till’s murder. Returning home the morning after listening to JFK (below) promising to desegregate “hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments”, Evers found his FBI protection detail had been suddenly withdrawn, and he was shot in his driveway, unintentionally desegregating the white hospitals of Mississippi shortly before dying.

That September, the KKK killed four young black girls by bombing a church in Birmingham. In November, JFK was assassinated. But the movement did not stop; it grew. In 1965, in Selma, Alabama, three times residents marched towards Montgomery to try to register to vote and to protest. First, they were beaten bloody and unconscious on the street by police on horseback. Second, they were stopped by legal action. And Third, they marched 54 miles to the capitol in Montgomery, joined by people from across the country, 25,000 strong, ultimately securing the Voting Rights Act a few months later.

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, who led that march and many others, gave his life for Civil Rights, along with many others. On 28 August 1963 in front of the Lincoln Memorial, he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Well, two of his children are now dead, and his youngest is 60. I believe we failed to achieve his dream in his timeframe. But we must not stop trying.

”One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves,
yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.
They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice.
They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression.
And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts,
will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” 

President John F. Kennedy, Televised Address to the Nation on Civil Rights, 11 June 1963

Rohwer

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The last American concentration camp to close was Rohwer, Arkansas, deep in the delta near the Arkansas Post. There’s an echo of history, since that site is part of the Trail of Tears, when another group of Americans were forcibly removed from their homes unconstitutionally and sent to live in government reservations. The vast camp soon returned to farmland, so little remains besides the cemetery above. Several of the graves mark infants and elderly inmates. The monument to the right is to the 442nd Regimental Combat team, the most highly decorated unit in US military history. They served in Europe, while their families were imprisoned. 

The neighboring town of McGehee maintains the excellent WWII Japanese American Internment Museum about both Rohwer and Jerome. The sculptor Ruth Asawa was imprisoned here. Another inmate at Rohwer was a 5 year old boy named George Takei, who later played Lt. Sulu on the original Star Trek. 

“And it became normal for me to go to school in a black tar-paper barrack
and begin the school day with a pledge of allegiance to the flag.
I could see the barbed wire fence and the sentry tower
right outside my schoolhouse window
as I recited the words,
‘with liberty and justice for all’.”

George Takei, speech at the museum on 16 April 2018

The Road to Equal Education

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The first school for African Americans began in Boston in 1798, was named Abiel Smith in 1815 and joined the Boston Public School System in 1816. In 1847, Sarah Roberts was denied admission to a closer, better funded white school, and her father sued, hiring Robert Morris, an African American attorney. The case ended up being forcefully argued by Abolitionist Charles Sumner—who was later beaten with a cane in the US Senate—, but lost. However, five years after the verdict, Massachusetts voted to outlaw public school segregation in 1855, 100 years before the US Supreme Court. And black education advanced elsewhere, such as Wilberforce College, begun by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1856 in Ohio, the first college owned and run by African Americans. 

That school desegregation law might not have come to pass if not for the extraordinary Frederick Douglass. Taught the alphabet as a 12 year old Maryland house slave, then denied further education and fiercely beaten, Frederick secretly taught himself to read and write. With the encouragement of Anna Murray, a free black woman from Baltimore, he escaped, married her and settled in Massachusetts. He joined the AME Zion Church (following Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth) and became a preacher in 1839. From then until his death 56 years later, Douglass was a paid speaker for Civil Rights. He befriended William Lloyd Garrison and began speaking to Abolitionists about his escape from slavery. He toured the northern states with the Anti-Slavery Society, and he toured Ireland and Great Britain, lecturing in churches. In England he befriended the Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson who got Parliament to end slavery in its colonies, and his English supporters bought Douglass’ freedom from his owner in Maryland. He returned to fight for abolition, desegregation and suffrage. Douglass wrote three best-selling autobiographies, and many readers were astonished that his speeches and books were the work of a former slave. He worked on the Underground Railroad with Tubman and with John Brown. During and after the Civil War he worked with Presidents. He fought for women’s suffrage. While not a traditional educator, Douglass changed many people’s minds, the most influential force for advancing Civil Rights in American History. In fact many of his works have not since been surpassed, such as his 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 

Emancipation brought an immediate need for schools, and northern churchgoing Abolitionist ladies, both white and black, went south to teach, even as the Civil War was just beginning. The Penn School was founded in South Carolina in 1862. Hampton University began as a ‘contraband school’, and attracted one ex-slave named Booker T. Washington to walk across Virginia to go to school. He founded the Tuskegee Institute in Georgia and hired another ex-slave named George Washington Carver, who would bring early bookmobiles or wagons loaded with techniques to improve agriculture into the fields to educate thousands of ex-slaves. Freedman Bureau schools were built along the border, including at Harpers Ferry, where Douglass and WEB DuBois lectured the children of slaves at Storer College. Booker T. Washington met Sears philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, whose parents lived next to self-educated Abe Lincoln, and in 1911 they began building 5,000 Rosenwald Schools across the south. 

While desperately needed, education was starkly unequal, and white teachers often had different expectations and goals for African American children. In Native American schools, education meant cultural obliteration, as native languages, songs, oral histories, traditions and cultural connections were severed, punished and often lost. Education needs people who respect, support and celebrate their students, culture and communities. Carter G. Woodson—the only Harvard History PhD whose parents had been enslaved—understood that, and he went on to lead the national education movement for African Americans in Washington DC, nationally raising standards, publishing, and mentoring future leaders, like educator and presidential advisor Mary McLeod Bethune. Dr Woodson believed that African American History needed to be studied and understood, and it is largely due to his efforts that we have Black History Month. 

Ultimately, the Supreme Court had to decide that segregated schools were unfair, damaging to black children and unconstitutional, in Brown v Board (see community mural above). In Texas there’s a segregated school for Mexican American children, shut down after Brown, that shows an unequal school. Desegregation led to race riots at Little Rock Central High School, and Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to walk black children to school. Some districts shut schools down for years rather than integrate.

Education is still too segregated in the US, and recent studies suggest racial disparities in education are now getting worse, especially as the Supreme Court no longer enforces Civil Rights laws effectively. For hundreds of years it was illegal for slaves to learn. No reading, no math, no writing, just the darkest ignorance, enforced by the whip. The men and women who struggled to lift themselves and others out of that darkness, knew the value of education for themselves and their children. Our teachers perform this heroic task every day, with little recognition, fighting against the cruelty of ignorance. Anne Sullivan brought Helen Keller out of darkness by teaching, becoming the first woman interred at the Olmsted designed National Cathedral, followed by her most famous student. We have traveled a great distance on the road to educational equality, but we must not turn back. We must keep teaching and learning and not stop until we get there. 

“Thus the thoughtless drift backward toward slavery.”

Carter G. Woodson, from The Mis-Education of the Negro

Jerome

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Jerome was the last American concentration camp to open and the first to close, as it was converted into a POW camp for Germans. The military acquired the land as a result of a tax default, and over 8,000 Americans of Japanese descent were incarcerated here in the southeast corner of Arkansas, deep in the Mississippi Bayou. The Governor of Arkansas insisted that none of the prisoners be allowed to remain in his legally segregated state after the war and that all of the guards be white. When it closed, the prisoners here were mostly transferred to the other camp in Arkansas, with some sent to Amache, Gila River and Heart Mountain; ‘trouble makers’ who protested had already been sent to Tule Lake. Besides the monument above, there is a deteriorating old smokestack from the infirmary visible in the distance to the right. Nothing else remains, and the land is now a working farm. 

Nothing except a shameful unconstitutional history, a duty to be better Americans, and memories. Below is detail from a painting by Henry Sugimoto showing how he remembered his time at Jerome. The painting is on display with many other exhibits at the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee about 20 miles north. The museum is excellent, open Thursday to Saturday, and is the result of talented, caring and dedicated townspeople working to preserve this important history without federal funding. 

All Civil War Parks

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The precursor to the Civil War was John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry arsenal in 1859. Lee, Jackson & Jeb Stuart were all there in uniform, before they turned against our country. Douglass & Tubman were not in the raid, although they were involved. Booth arrived to witness Brown’s execution. The government may have quickly restored order in town, but across the country people divided into abolitionists or secessionists. Lincoln, arguing against slavery, was elected in 1860, and southern states began to secede to protect slavery.

The Confederacy raised an army and attacked Fort Sumter in April of 1861. That same month, Union soldiers were attacked by Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore, leading Clara Barton to begin her service as a nurse. In May three escaped slaves were granted protection as ‘contraband’ at Fort Monroe in northern Virginia. Lincoln sent troops south where they were incompetently led into battle at Manassas in Virginia in July. The Confederates also won at Wilson’s Creek but were unable to take Missouri. The Union won at Carnifex Ferry in September, causing West Virginia to split from Virginia and become a state in 1863. In November, the Union Navy took Port Royal South Carolina, liberating 10,000 slaves, many forming the first African American regiment there one year later. 

In January 1862 the Union won at Mill Springs Kentucky, followed the next month by Grant taking Fort Donelson on the strategic Cumberland River in northwest Tennessee. In March the Union won again at Pea Ridge in Arkansas and at Glorietta Pass in New Mexico, supported by Fort Union cavalry. In Tennessee in April, Shiloh (above) was a costly victory, followed by naval victories at Fort Pulaski blockading Savannah Georgia and the capture of New Orleans in Louisiana, where three more African American regiments would form within a year. In May the Union took Yorktown in Virginia, but in June the Union failed in its approach to Richmond. Then in August another loss at Manassas again. The Confederates marched into Maryland, but lost at Antietam in September. In December, the Union failed again in Virginia at Fredricksburg.

On the 1st of January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was read first with immediate effect to the SC 1st Volunteers, freeing them, their families and friends forever. Many more emancipated and free African American men would join the Union army at bases like Camp Nelson in Kentucky, Fort Scott in Kansas, and New Bedford and Boston in Massachusetts. That same winter the Union won at Stones River in Tennessee but lost at Chancellorsville in Virginia in spring. On June 2nd, Union spy Harriet Tubman led 150 African American soldiers to free 700 slaves at Combahee Ferry. Lee marched north again, losing decisively in July at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Grant concluded his siege of Vicksburg the next day, July 4th. In the fall the Union advanced to the border of Tennessee and Georgia at Chattanooga and Chickamauga.

In 1864 the Union took northern Virginia with extensive fighting in Spotsylvania county. Slowly Grant was advancing towards Richmond, at one point outmaneuvering Lee at Petersburg and beginning a long siege of both cities. Meanwhile, Sherman was advancing in Mississippi, despite delays at Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo. In Georgia, Sherman was stopped at Kennesaw Mountain in July, before resuming his march to the sea. With the Confederate capital under siege, Lee ordered a sneak attack on the Union capital in July, crucially delayed at Monocacy in Maryland, after which snipers fired at Fort Stevens in DC. In August, Farragut took the last major southern port of Mobile Bay in Alabama. And in October, the Union defended the Shenandoah Valley at Cedar Creek in Virginia.

In the spring of 1865, after a months-long siege, Lee abandoned both Petersburg and Richmond, retreated and then surrendered in Appomattox in April. Andersonville was liberated in May. The CSS Shenandoah, which circumnavigated the globe during the war seizing African American crews from whaling ships, surrendered in Liverpool England in November, the last act of the war.

All Civil War Battles, Zero Carbon Travel

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The precursor to the Civil War was John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry arsenal in 1859. Lee, Jackson & Jeb Stuart were all there in uniform, before they turned against our country. Douglass & Tubman were not in the raid, although they were involved. Booth arrived to witness Brown’s execution. The government may have quickly restored order in town, but across the country people divided into abolitionists or secessionists. Lincoln, arguing against slavery, was elected in 1860, and southern states began to secede to protect slavery.

The Confederacy raised an army and attacked Fort Sumter in April of 1861. That same month, Union soldiers were attacked by Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore, leading Clara Barton to begin her service as a nurse. In May three escaped slaves were granted protection as ‘contraband’ at Fort Monroe in northern Virginia. Lincoln sent troops south where they were incompetently led into battle at Manassas in Virginia in July. The Confederates also won at Wilson’s Creek but were unable to take Missouri. The Union won at Carnifex Ferry in September, causing West Virginia to split from Virginia and become a state in 1863. In November, the Union Navy took Port Royal South Carolina, liberating 10,000 slaves, many forming the first African American regiment there one year later. 

In January 1862 the Union won at Mill Springs Kentucky, followed the next month by Grant taking Fort Donelson on the strategic Cumberland River in northwest Tennessee. In March the Union won again at Pea Ridge in Arkansas and at Glorietta Pass in New Mexico, supported by Fort Union cavalry. In Tennessee in April, Shiloh (above) was a costly victory, followed by naval victories at Fort Pulaski blockading Savannah Georgia and the capture of New Orleans in Louisiana, where three more African American regiments would form within a year. In May the Union took Yorktown in Virginia, but in June the Union failed in its approach to Richmond. Then in August another loss at Manassas again. The Confederates marched into Maryland, but lost at Antietam in September. In December, the Union failed again in Virginia at Fredricksburg.

On the 1st of January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was read first with immediate effect to the SC 1st Volunteers, freeing them, their families and friends forever. Many more emancipated and free African American men would join the Union army at bases like Camp Nelson in Kentucky, Fort Scott in Kansas, and New Bedford and Boston in Massachusetts. That same winter the Union won at Stones River in Tennessee but lost at Chancellorsville in Virginia in spring. On June 2nd, Union spy Harriet Tubman led 150 African American soldiers to free 700 slaves at Combahee Ferry. Lee marched north again, losing decisively in July at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Grant concluded his siege of Vicksburg the next day, July 4th. In the fall the Union advanced to the border of Tennessee and Georgia at Chattanooga and Chickamauga.

In 1864 the Union took northern Virginia with extensive fighting in Spotsylvania county. Slowly Grant was advancing towards Richmond, at one point outmaneuvering Lee at Petersburg and beginning a long siege of both cities. Meanwhile, Sherman was advancing in Mississippi, despite delays at Brices Cross Roads and Tupelo. In Georgia, Sherman was stopped at Kennesaw Mountain in July, before resuming his march to the sea. With the Confederate capital under siege, Lee ordered a sneak attack on the Union capital in July, crucially delayed at Monocacy in Maryland, after which snipers fired at Fort Stevens in DC. In August, Farragut took the last major southern port of Mobile Bay in Alabama. And in October, the Union defended the Shenandoah Valley at Cedar Creek in Virginia.

In the spring of 1865, after a months-long siege, Lee abandoned both Petersburg and Richmond, retreated and then surrendered in Appomattox in April. Andersonville was liberated in May. The CSS Shenandoah, which circumnavigated the globe during the war seizing African American crews from whaling ships, surrendered in Liverpool England in November, the last act of the war.

Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail

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Dallas County Alabama systematically denied its 15,000 African American residents from registering to vote, using poll taxes, literacy tests, white-only primaries, and grandfather clauses, which made registration easier for those whose ancestors voted when only whites could vote. In 1963, with older people intimidated by murderous KKK raids or being fired for speaking out, organizers asked local high school students to protest. They did, meeting in churches—the only places they could safely assemble—and they were trained in non-violent protesting. Students marched by the thousands, staged lunch counter sit-ins, were beaten and arrested. All civil rights meetings were then banned by a local judge in 1964. Then, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr came to Selma to speak in defiance of that ban, bringing national media attention. The contrast between black citizens, old and young, assembling peacefully to try to register to vote, and the police who denied their rights violently—criminals with badges—was to play out on TV. 

The teachers marched with their students. The police filled the jails with hundreds of students. Beatings outside churches turned uglier, and on 18 February 1965, while protecting his family, Jimmy Lee Jackson was shot to death by a police officer who was not punished. In response, the people decided to march 54 miles to the state capital in Montgomery. The police responded at the Edmund Pettus Bridge—the first step in the march—with billy clubs, horses and tear gas. Bloody Sunday, 7 March 1965. The TV coverage made the protest national overnight. Dr King organized a second march, but stopped on the bridge to avoid violence and due to a federal injunction. Rev James Reeb was killed on 11 March. LBJ called out the national guard, saying “we shall overcome” in a major speech 15 March. On 17 March, a judge cleared the injunction. Then Dr King led a third march, all the way from Selma to Montgomery from 21 to 25 March. Singers like Sammy Davis Jr, Nina Simone, and Harry Belafonte encouraged 25,000 marchers along the route. Upon arrival at the statehouse, Dr King gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech, including the phrase, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act on 6 August 1965. 

Selma may have been the turning point that enfranchised millions of African Americans, but the city and surrounding ‘black belt’ in central Alabama has suffered economic exclusion. Burned out buildings are common there today. The national park service is currently renovating several historic buildings in Selma including an interpretive center, and there’s also a Voting Rights Museum just across the Edmund Pettus Bridge which has an excellent, detailed display. Selma’s sights include the churches, lodgings and offices used by the organizers, and the jail where they were incarcerated. Halfway on the trail, near where Viola Liuzzo was murdered by the KKK, the park service has another interpretive center with an excellent multimedia film. Along US 80 are the four campsites used by the marchers.  And on the campus of Alabama State University in Montgomery, there’s another interpretive center with a different, also excellent film. And Montgomery sights include the state Capitol, a memorial designed by Maya Lin, and the Rosa Parks Museum, along with various archives and gathering areas. The drive is easy, and I recommend all three stops for the complete experience. 

The King Center in Atlanta gives a broad and deep view into the life and works of Dr King, as well as the ongoing non-violent international justice movement. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute explores how deeply segregation divided society, how violent the oppression became both across the street in the park and at the 16th Street Baptist Church where four young girls were killed by the KKK in a bombing, and how strong the Civil Rights Movement became. But the Selma to Montgomery trail, with its searing photos and video testimony of foot soldiers, brings history to life. The open racism (see photo) is shocking and revealing. In one of the films, a white woman argues that since Jefferson Davis was their president, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation has no effect, that slavery is still the law. Such vile hatred does not dissipate overnight. Indeed, in both subtle and ugly ways, racism still divides our society. So we must feel this history again to continue fighting more effectively. 

Road to Abolition

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The American movement to abolish slavery began before the Constitution was written. In 1780, Pennsylvania enacted a law gradually abolishing slavery. When he was in Philadelphia as President, George Washington tried to evade this law by rotating his slaves back to Virginia, although one, Oney Judge, escaped and lived out her life in New Hampshire, despite Washington’s efforts to reclaim her. By 1783 the Supreme Court of Massachusetts declared slavery unconstitutional in the state, abolishing it and making the state a focal point for abolition for the next 80 years. Thomas Jefferson called slavery immoral, a threat to the nation and contrary to the laws of nature, but he didn’t free his own slaves and edited his own anti-slavery views out of the final draft of the Constitution to placate other slaveowners, like Charles Pinckney. Before John Dickinson signed the Constitution in 1787, he freed his slaves unconditionally in 1786. 

The Northwest Territories, now the northeastern states of the Midwest, were free in 1787 before they became states, and by 1817, all but one of the states north of the Mason-Dixon Line abolished slavery either immediately or over time. Delaware was the exception, where slavery persisted despite being viewed as abhorrent by Quakers, such as Thomas Garrett, who ultimately helped liberate over 2,500 slaves. The Liberator, a weekly newspaper begun in 1831 in Boston by William Garrison, spread throughout the free states, making Abolition a national issue and sparking direct action, including liberating slaves south of the Mason-Dixon. 

In 1838 Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland by train through Delaware to Philadelphia, and quickly he married in New York and settled in New Bedford. That same September, self-educated Douglass went to Nantucket to hear his favorite publisher Garrison speak and was asked to speak himself, giving his first-hand views of slavery. 20 years later, Douglass had written two best-selling autobiographies, toured the North, traveled to London, and was giving fiery speeches to abolitionists at Boston’s African Meeting House.

Fellow escaped Maryland slave Harriet Tubman was in the audience, listening to Douglass speak and raising funds there for the Underground Railroad, when she wasn’t liberating slaves in Maryland herself or with her friend Garrett. The Underground Railroad also helped slaves escape up the Mississippi River to New Philadelphia—an Illinois town founded in 1836 by a freed slave—before escaping the reach of the Fugitive Slave Act by crossing the Canadian border. Few of the stops on the Underground Railroad still exist, but I believe Mammoth Cave may have been one, as the enslaved tour guide had rare freedom to organize both tours for visiting Abolitionists and temporary lodgings for “servants”. 

Abolition was also fought in the courts. In 1839, Africans took over the slave ship Amistad, killed the captain and cook and demanded the crew sail back to Africa. Caught off of New York, their murder trial pitted racist President Van Buren against abolitionist John Quincy Adams. The Supreme Court found that the Africans had been kidnapped, had acted within their legal rights to avoid slavery, and were free. The courts were struggling with slavery, where one’s race could change legally from state to state, depending on one’s ancestry. In 1846 a court found a Florida woman, once a slave from Senegal, to be legally Spanish, allowing her to inherit her owner/husband’s plantation. The legislative fight over slavery in new states broke into armed confIict in Kansas in 1854. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against a slave named Dred Scott who had sued for freedom in St Louis, arguing that he had become free while in Illinois. Abolitionists, enraged, funded John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. 

Secession did not stop slaves from trying to self-emancipate. Every Union border outpost or advance into Confederate territory became a magnet for escaping slaves. In 1861, on the day Virginia seceded, three slaves turned up at Fort Monroe and were given protection by the Union Army, which officially labeled them ‘contraband’ meaning ‘illegal to possess’. When the Confederates evacuated Port Royal in late 1861, 10,000 slaves were effectively freed, and Harriet Tubman soon arrived to expand her network of spies and liberators. One of the first Union naval victories happened in 1862, when enslaved pilot Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate ship, sailed past Fort Sumter at night with his friends & families to freedom, and gave the ship to the Union Navy in nearby Port Royal. 

Abraham Lincoln, whose experiences as a boy and as an anti-slavery advocate had prepared him to be President at this crucial time, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Years Day 1863—first read under the Emancipation Oaks at Port Royal South Carolina (see photo above)—, both freeing slaves and allowing the formation of African American regiments to fight for freedom, first at Port Royal in South Carolina, then in Massachusetts, Kansas and Kentucky. In 1865, the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was proposed, passed, signed and ratified, abolishing slavery in the United States, almost. 

In 1866 the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ in Oklahoma changed their laws to recognize that slavery was no longer legal, making the law legally effective nationally that June. While emancipation reached Texas on Juneteenth 1865, the state officially ratified the 13th Amendment in 1870. Delaware rejected the 13th Amendment in 1865, and they finally ratified it in 1901. Kentucky ratified the 13th Amendment in 1976. And Mississippi, the last state, ratified the 13th Amendment in 1995, but neglected to inform the National Archives to make it official, until 2013. 

Traveling to all the national park sites related to Abolitionism has been deeply moving, and I especially recommend the Boston African American Historic Site, the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in upstate New York, and most of all, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park near Beaufort, South Carolina. Next week I will cover the Civil War.