Montgomery, AL Summary

photo by gusto

Montgomery, the state capital since 1846, is known as “the Cradle of the Confederacy” because the Confederate States of America were established here in 1861 with Montgomery as its first capital. It was also in Montgomery that the constitution of the Confederacy was drawn up. It is ironic, given this heritage, that Montgomery’s African-American citizens made it a mainspring of the Civil Rights Movement, and hence of nationwide change, during the 1950s.

Montgomery is located in central Alabama at the intersection of I-65, I-85, and Hwys 80 and 231. It spreads out across several hills adjacent to the Alabama River. Although it has a population of 320,000, Montgomery retains something of a small-town feel. It has its own airport and bus depot. Two of the city’s most famous sons are research chemist Percy Julian and singer/pianist Nat King Cole.

The land hereabouts was formerly the preserve of the Alibamu and Creek tribes. Two independent but proximate European settlements were set up in 1817 and 1818. In 1819 the two were united and named after Richard Montgomery, a hero of the Revolutionary War. This township became an important river port for the shipment of cotton south to the seaport at Mobile. In 1865 General Wilson led the Union’s largest Civil War raid into Alabama, winning a victory in Montgomery. In 1910 Orville and Wilbur Wright constructed an airfield at what is now Maxwell Air Force Base, where two students undertook the first night flights in aviation history.

A key moment in the history of both Montgomery and US civil rights was the boycott of the Montgomery bus system by local African-American citizens. Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who was serving in his first posting as a minister, became the main spokesperson for the protesters. The boycott started in 1955 with the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. Despite intimidation (King’s home was bombed) and jailings, the Supreme Court eventually ruled the seating system unconstitutional and, after a year’s grueling struggle, the bus companies yielded. The tactics, ideas, organizational methods, and impetus that developed during the boycott became a model for, and a tremendous encouragement to, others across the nation, and challenges to the Southern “Jim Crow” laws soon spread.

However, attitudes did not rapidly change in Montgomery. In May 1961 a group riding desegregated buses through the South was met by a huge mob of whites in Montgomery who brutally beat the riders and onlooking journalists, and set an innocent African-American teenage bystander on fire. That night whites surrounded the church where the African-American community had gathered. With violence building, they were only stopped at the doors of the church by the last-minute arrival of the National Guard. Eventually the “Freedom Rides” continued with an escort of FBI and reporters’ vehicles, helicopters, and National Guardsmen aboard the bus. There was an understanding that the riders would be arrested on arrival in Mississippi.

In downtown Montgomery there is a moving civil rights memorial, designed by Maya Lin, who created the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. The King Memorial Baptist Church was the organizational and social center of the 1955 bus boycott. The former pulpit of Dr King remains in the sanctuary and a civil rights mural adorns the basement. The Montgomery Visitor Center is the starting place for a tour of Old Alabama Town. This re-created nineteenth-century Alabama village features 40 period buildings moved in from around the state. Another 20 nineteenth-century buildings can be found down in Montgomery’s Old North Hull Street Historic District.

An architectural highlight of Montgomery is the State Capitol (1851), which has a beautiful and ornate interior with a rotunda and a magnificent spiral staircase designed by Horace King, a former slave. A bronze star on the steps commemorates the spot where Jefferson Davis took office as president of the Confederacy. It was on these same steps, in 1963, that Alabama Governor George Wallace made his famous “Segregation Forever!” inaugural speech. In 1965 the Selma to Montgomery march (see entry on Selma, page 311) ended here with Dr King making a speech against segregation. Montgomery has several museums of interest. The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum is based in a house briefly rented by the couple in 1931-32 while he worked on “Tender Is The Night.” Zelda was born in Montgomery. The Hank Williams Museum is dedicated to the country music legend who was born south of Montgomery near Georgiana in 1923. His funeral was held in Montgomery in 1953 with 25,000 fans in attendance, and his grave with a large marble headstone can be found in Montgomery’s Oakwood Cemetery Annex. The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts features American paintings, regional art, and a hands-on studio for children. It is located within the grounds of the beautifully landscaped Wynton Blount Cultural Park where the Carolyn Blount Theater hosts the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which is held each year.