Thursday June 30, 2011

For those of you asking we are still alive.  We just have not had Internet access.  I will post the week with Michelle later today and we will only be two days behind.  Love you all.

We left Gaffney KOA this morning.  It was hot.  Today we will make it to Michelle’s house but we have time to stop at a museum.  Yvonne found one in Greensboro NC on the Internet.  It is called the “International Civil Rights Museum.”  So we programmed “Rosemary” to find it for us. 

When we stopped we had no idea what an experience we would have.  It took a bit to find the museum as it had been moved from a 25 story office building to the original Woolworth’s store where the incident that the museum commemorates happened. 

This museum, through relatively small, tells the civil rights story through graphic photo collages of KKK lynching, police dogs and water cannons used on protesters.  High tech video’s and holograms, and the original Woolworth’s lunch counter where 4 African-American freshmen from the local university sat one day, asked to be  served and started a revolution.

Because of these four brave young and the people they inspired to support and help them, a nonviolent sit in of about 6 months accomplished the desegregation of all the Woolworth’s lunch counters in the south. (Blacks had always be able to shop in the store, it was the lunch counter that was the issue)  Young blacks throughout the south continued the daily ”sit in” until Woolworth’s stores finally buckled due to the financial impact on the stores bottom line.

Our docent, Anita, was an active a passionate story teller and several members of our tour group remarked that they remembered having to abide by some of the “Jim Crow” laws that Anita explained to us.  (Colored and white restrooms, drinking fountains, waiting rooms at the train and bus stations and Coca Cola machines that had cheaper cokes for the whites.)  The tour ended with a room that displayed the names of many famous and also the not famous victims of the fight for civil rights. 

The museum tells an extremely moving story designed to educate and keep us from forgetting the courage and perseverance of those involved in the struggle.

Back on the road we pulled into the Virginia Beach KOA 3 hours later and got set up, met Michelle for hugs and kisses and then a great Thai dinner.