I write tonight from Alabama.  I am somewhere between Montgomery (to the south) and Birmingham (to the north).  My route home has been altered because the starling I was going to rehome died suddenly last night.  Maybe she knew she was going elsewhere and just didn't want to leave her stewardess of nearly a year.  I am saddened by this -- not so much because I was looking forward to this adoption; much, much more so because of the loss to Alex (her stewardess).  There is nothing quite like rescuing a wild animal and keeping it on because it wouldn't be safe to let it free.  My two rescued starlings lived over 12 years; and my grackle rescue (Smokey) continues on at 15.  These are incredible beings, incredible companions.

But back to Alabama.  Ever since I crossed the state line some 200+ miles ago, I have been thinking about what this state means in our US national history.  It was here, in 1955, Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to white passenger on a bus, birthing the most important grass roots movement in my lifetime.  I was 9 years old, and somehow word of that rebellion made its way into my awareness.  I knew right then and there that this was good and that the racism I'd been taught was bad.  I was in trouble with my mother for the rest of her life.  

1955

Dec. 1

 (Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.

Read more: Civil Rights Movement Timeline (14th Amendment, 1964 Act, Human Rights Law) — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#ixzz1nRgPJQr0

1963

April 16

Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

May

During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

Sept. 15

(Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths.

Read more: Civil Rights Movement Timeline (14th Amendment, 1964 Act, Human Rights Law) — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#ixzz1nRjw0VTy

Peace,

Joan