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The museum is very well done, and it takes visitors through the civil rights struggle from after the Civil War to the present. Without going into too much detail, these are some of the exhibits that struck me (click on each photo to read the text):
It’s inspirational. And also really depressing.
Next: Gulfport, Mississippi
Memphis was our first real bout with winter weather. Didn’t we take the southern route to avoid this?1
In another instance of serendipity, we arrived in Memphis during the International Blues Challenge 2024. Bands from the U.S., Canada, and beyond were playing in the restaurants on Beale Street, so we got to enjoy some good BBQ and blues music. A few shots of the performers, which don’t at all capture the experience:
We also visited the Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Soul Museum, the Stax Museum, and Sun Studios.
For some reason, I took no photos inside the Stax Museum. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, when the rest of Memphis was segregated, Stax was one of the few places where black and white artists and staff could work together as equals; when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, while rioters destroyed much of the neighborhood, no one touched the Stax building because it was so esteemed by the community. In the aftermath of the assassination, however, divisions began to form along racial lines; and despite having a stellar group of artists and songwriters—including Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MGs, Isaac Hayes, and others—a series of bad distribution deals ultimately led to Stax’s bankruptcy. Today, there is a music charter school attached to Stax, but the neighborhood looks to have not recovered from the riots.
Next: the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel
The roadmaps are starting to get complicated, so let’s just get to it:
We next set out for Birmingham, planning to arrive in the evening and see the Civil Rights Museum the next day. When we woke up and checked the museum’s website, however, we saw that it was closed due to winter weather. Incredulous, we checked out of the hotel. We were at least able to visit the 16th Street Baptist Church and pay our respects.
As we began our drive to Memphis via Muscle Shoals, however, we began to understand why the city had decided to shut down.
It doesn’t take much ice on the road to shut down a region that isn’t used to driving on it.
We took backroads to Muscle Shoals.
Finally, we reached the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studio, which also was closed because of the weather.
Abby saw a sign for Tuscumbia, the town where Helen Keller was born, so we drove past the house, which is now a museum.
And with that, we drove back into Tennessee, to Memphis.
Next: Blues and barbecue
From Atlanta, we drove to Montgomery, AL. On our way, we realized that we’d be spending Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in in the city that started the civil rights movement.
Our first stop was the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which commemorates the victims of lynchings between 1877 and 1950. Each county where a lynching took place has one hanging steel column with the names of the victims engraved.
The memorial includes some detail on the events that sparked the lynchings, and they are horrific:
And so on.
The next day, we went to the Rosa Parks Museum and the Civil Rights Legacy Museum, both of which were quite good. The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is fascinating. (No photos were allowed in either museum.) But first was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade. There were some high school bands, Greek letter organizations, political candidates, and civic groups, and a replica of the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.
I was surprised to see so few people along the parade route, but Montgomery, despite being the state capital, seems to be a hollowed-out city. It is very low density, with few tall buildings, and also apparently economically distressed. Granted, these photos were taken on a Sunday and on MLK Day, but the vibe was one of emptiness.
Next: Birmingham
We went to Atlanta to visit family and friend. And some other friends: specifically, the muppets. Atlanta hosts the Center for Puppetry Arts, which houses the world’s largest collection of Jim Henson artifacts.
There also are historical puppets and some other favorites from film, TV, and theater in the rest of the museum.
As an aside: because of either planned arrival times or bad weather, we had to bypass the Kentucky Museum of American Pocket Knives, the American Museum of the House Cat, and the National Bird Dog Museum. Sorry for those of you who would have liked to see them. We did, however, go to the first KFC restaurant, in Corbin, KY, which evolved from a service station to a cafe to a worldwide chain of restaurants. There is more Colonel Sanders memorabilia than I could have imagined.
From Pigeon Forge we went to Asheville, NC after we realized it was only two hours away. Our original plan was to stay in Asheville for three days only, but as soon as we started looking around, we realized that we wanted to stay longer—not because there was so much to do, but because the city was so nice. It has much of its early 20th century architecture, many excellent restaurants and art galleries, and a definite hipster vibe. Basically, any building that could have been turned into an artists’ market, a coffee bar, or a restaurant, has been.
The gem of Asheville is the Biltmore Estate, the home of George Washington Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt—the grandson of railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt—had the home constructed in 1889-1895. It remains the largest privately-owned house in the U.S., with 33 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms and 250 rooms overall—a particularly impressive size given that the Vanderbilt household consisted of only him, his wife, and his daughter. It’s also impressive given that George Vanderbilt was an art collector, was not involved in the family business, and built the house entirely from his inheritance.
The Vanderbilts seem to have used the house mostly for week-long house parties. Let’s see how the other half lives. (Click on each photo for a better view.)
We were not allowed to take many photographs of the backstairs areas, but the quarters for the servants who lived onsite were, for the time, comfortable. There were 21 rooms on the top level for maids and the guests’ maids and nannies, rooms above the stable for male staff, and a few rooms in the basement for the kitchen staff.
The original estate was 125,000 acres, which is roughly nine times the size of Manhattan, and it featured a working dairy farm as well as gardens and hunting grounds. The estate’s grounds were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, whose portrait (by Sargent) hangs in the family room. Over the years, land was donated to the U.S. National Park Service or sold to pay for the estate’s expenses, and it now is only 8,000 acres, or just over half the size of Manhattan. Vanderbilt’s descendants still own the property, but have not lived there since 1956.
If it weren’t for Dolly Parton, Pigeon Forge would probably be known its outlet malls and local amusement parks. But because of Dolly Parton, who grew up in nearby Sevierville, Pigeon Forge is primarily known as the home of Dollywood.
Dollywood is the latest version of an amusement park that had operated on the site in various forms since 1961. Dolly put her name on it in 1986, and it has since grown to be the largest employer in the area. As the park has expanded, it has taken on more of Dolly’s personality, with attractions that reflect the places she grew up (e.g., a replica of her family home; the diner where she had her first hamburger, and the theater where she first performed).
We were there during the last week of the park’s operation, right before it was going to close for the winter. Abby had the sense to ask a staffer whether it was better to buy tickets at the window or from a self-service kiosk, and the staffer told her that “the owner” was in the park that day and had told the staff to hand out a supply of “Friends and Family” passes that were going to expire that weekend. As a result, although we never saw her, we were Dolly Parton’s guests. (For all we know, though, the staffer could have been referring to someone from Herschend Family Entertainment, which co-owns the property, but we’d rather think that Dolly’s hand was in it.)
It was still Christmas at Dollywood, but it also was bitterly cold, and the park was nearly empty.
Even as the park began to fill, we still waited no more than 10 minutes to get on any of the rides. Dollywood has some impressive roller coasters.
Next: Asheville, NC.
What do you do in Bowling Green? You visit the National Corvette Museum. Bowling Green is home to both the Corvette Museum and the Corvette factory.
Fun fact: on February 12, 2014, a sinkhole opened beneath the museum and swallowed eight Corvettes.
This part of Kentucky sits above miles of cavern, as we discovered when we visited Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world; more than 400 miles of cave passages have been surveyed, with countless additional miles yet to be explored. The bit under the Corvette Museum aside, most of the limestone cave system lies under a sandstone layer which protects the cave ceilings from water erosion and eventual collapse.
The first section we visited had been a saltpeter mine (worked by slaves, naturally) during the War of 1812. After the war, the demand for black gunpowder shrank, so the cave owners—the caves were owned privately until the government bought the land, in 1926—opened the caves to tourists. These visitors (and soldiers who used the caves during the Civil War) used candle smoke to write their names on the cavern ceiling. Anyone caught doing that today would be charged with a felony.
In other parts of the cave, water did come in through sinkholes, which resulted in the more familiar sorts of rock formations.
We also visited Bernheim Forest, to see the Forest Giants. These giants—named Mama Loumari, Elina, and little Nis—are the works of Danish artist Thomas Dambo, who built them from recycled wood.
Next: bits of Tennessee and North Carolina
We left Cincinnati to drive to Bowling Green, to visit friends and to see Mammoth Cave. Since Louisville was on the way, and since both Colonel Sanders and Muhammed Ali are buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill cemetery, we had to stop there.
Below Muhammed Ali’s grave is a stone set in the ground that reads “He took a few cups of love, he took one tablespoon of patience, one teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern, and then he mixed willingness with happiness, he added lots of faith and he stirred it up well. Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime and he served to each and every person he met.“
Theirs were not the only ornate memorials. This one, for local magician Harry Leon Collins, also caught our eye. His stone reads: “He comes to you with top hat donned. White gloves flash with a sleight of hand that stretches reality beyond. The twinkle in his eyes hides the secret he will never share. With awe, you feel your heart’s great thrill like none you can compare. What lies in the heart of this man? Drawn to him are the children of the land. They know that love flows in abundance, for his heart and soul are reflected in his smiling glance. And now gathered here, with tears in our eyes, grief in our hearts and stiff proper smiles, we honor this great loving man. Never again will we see the twinkle of his eye — the sleight of his hand that drew the children of the land.” That it took twice as long to eulogize local magician Harry Collins as it did to eulogize the Greatest was unexpected, but I subsequently learned from Wikipedia that Harry Collins was the official corporate magician for the Frito-Lay Corporation. “He promoted Frito-Lay products while doing magic tricks, and was known both as ‘Mr. Magic’ and as ‘The Frito-Lay Magician.'” Well, then.
Next, we visited the Hillerich & Bradsby Company factory. You don’t know the Hillerich & Bradsby Company? Of course you do: they make the Louisville Slugger.
The wood—birch, maple, or ash, from trees harvested from H&B’s tree farm in Pennsylvania—is shaped into billets. Some baseball players have a reserve of their own billets from which their personal bats are made. The billets are then shaped into baseball bats by machine and finished. The factory has some of the greats’ bats available for visitors to hold (but not swing).
Then, onto Bowling Green.
Next: what we saw in Bowling Green.