Driving Back East Thru the South: Alabama, Georgia & North Carolina
We continued our drive to the East Coast through the Southern US after New Orleans, aiming to be in Washington, DC for family thanksgiving dinner. From Louisiana, we drove through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina in only a few days, staying in/near cities. The experience made Corey and I discuss doing a separate trip to the South some other time, since it seemed we gave the South, especially its smaller towns and nature, short shrift.
In Montgomery, Alabama, we visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which I had wanted to see since reading this article in the New Yorker in 2016 (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/bryan-stevenson-and-the-legacy-of-lynching/amp), followed by this article in 2018 (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-devastating-overdue-national-memorial-to-lynching-victims/amp). Erected and managed by the Equal Justice Initiative, the memorial, in the words of its own website pays tribute to “more than 4400 African American men, women, and children [who] were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.” There are 805 brown rusty steel columns suspended in the air, hanging from bars above - one for each county where lynchings took place, with the names of the victims (or no name due to poor documentation) and the dates of their deaths. It is that simple in concept really. It is hard to find word to describe such a memorial (“eloquently done” seems inappropriate for a place designed to remember victims of horrific and systemic violence), but it is absolutely one of the most powerful and harrowing memorials/museums I have ever seen. Lastly, there is some hidden genius and activism in the design: For each hanging steel column, there is an identical steel column at the back of the memorial, one for each county to take from the memorial and erect in the county itself. The memorial notes that in a lot of cases, counties have no local memorial or even a plaque to keep the lynchings in the public consciousness. The Equal Justice Initiative is inviting counties to take these, but from the look of it, most of them had not. (Corey took a photo of the column with Missouri.)
We also stopped in Athens, Georgia and Asheville, North Carolina. Both are charming little cities with good food and micro-breweries. While walking on a particular block with a barbecue joint and 3-4 breweries, Corey declared that the mix of smells from brewers’ hops and barbecue was the absolute best - he wants to bottle it up as cologne and call it Eau de Excellent Choices. We ended up eating two of the best meals we have had on this trip in Athens (at The National) and in Asheville (at Buxton Hall). Corey’s absolutely dream dish is below.
Before we get to DC, we will stay in Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem to visit friends, so we have some more days on the road, but no dinners / evening hangouts in campgrounds. Knowing this, in our campground near Asheville, we lit our last campfire for this trip with some sadness and ate our last airstream-cooked dinner (you’d be surprised what I can cobble up with leftover provisions). It’s been real good, our adventure with the little Airstream.
