Martin Luther King and Civil Rights

Here are a few pictures from our hotel area in Charleston, South Carolina:

We left Charleston and drove to Atlanta, Georgia. We tried to see the Jimmy Carter presidential library, but he was going to be there 2 hours later for a book signing. Security had already closed down the library and we didn't want to wait in line for 2 hours. Ah, well!

This was our second stop:

This is the wagon that carried his coffin:

I joined the group walking across the  Edmund Pettus bridge:

Outside on the grounds:

I don't know what these are but they were everywhere and so beautiful!!!:

After this stop we made our way to here:

This is where the church got it's name:

This is the church where Martin Luther King's grandfather and father were ministers and where Martin

also served with his father for a time.

Just a couple of blocks from here is the home

where MLK was born:

That was our day - less sobering than previous or upcoming days! And pretty nice weather to boot!!

National Park and Ft. Sumter

While in South Carolina we were able to visit the beautiful Congaree National Park. It is an "old growth" floodplain and it is one of the tallest broad-leaf forests in the world -- wow!!

We wandered through this beautiful

 place on a lovely boardwalk:

This mud is called Dorovan muck and is eight feet thick! 

All of those knobby things you see around the trees are called "knees". They come out of the roots of the tree--one purpose might be to provide extra support

during floods and high winds.

South Carolina is known as the Palmetto State. This is a dwarf palmetto. They thrive here because the ground is wet and sandy and the hurricanes that occur create a gap in the canopy so the sunlight reaches the forest floor.

Here are a few more pics just so you can see this amazing place!!

Our favorite sight of the day was the Pileated Woodpecker. Isn't it amazing?

I thought this sign was very funny, but also made me grateful that we weren't here in the summer!

Two other interesting things about the Congaree. In 1919 the sale of alcohol was prohibited and moonshiners and bootleggers found refuge in this forest to earn a living.

Many escaped slaves sought refuge in this forest because it was so dense it was difficult for slave owners to follow or find them.

Our last site today was Fort Sumter. We had to catch a ferry in Charleston to get to the Fort. 

It was still cold!

We'd never seen an aircraft carrier before:

This is where the Civil War began - Fort Sumter:

This is the flag that flew over Ft. Sumpter in 1861. The Confederates allowed Major Anderson to take it

 with him when they surrendered the fort.

The coolest part of the visit was Kent helping to retire the flag for the day:

More Civil war - leading into Civil Rights

We were able to visit Thomas Jefferson's home - Monticello - today. Wow!! We weren't able to take pictures inside the house, but the entire basement area was open, showing the storage area and the kitchen where the slaves prepared food, etc.
I didn't know that Jefferson was an inventor. He invented his own version of the odometer. And yes, I stood there and spun the wheel until I rang the bell! (see the picture below this one.)

This is the ice house - yes it was snowing.

 

He also designed his own carriages:

I'm not going to show you ALL of the things that were under the house - too much. But, here are few more:

This was a dumb waiter for delivering wine up to the dining room. There were four of them in the house:

Kitchen:

Decorative beads and hooks for the enslaved women's "allotted" clothing. See the explanation below the display.

Keys to wind watches:

Here are two of the outside of the house:

On the tour of the house, the guide asked, "What 3 things did Jefferson want to be remembered for?" Everyone got "writing the Declaration of Independence" and founding the University of Virginia" but the third was harder. The guide said he'd give a gold star to the person who could come up with the third. 

Guess who got the gold star?:

Oh, what's number 3? He wrote the "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom".

This is Mulberry Row, where the slave quarters were:

This is part of the garden where they would have worked:

The posts you can see sticking out are the legs of the ladder used to climb up into this small sleeping space:

This is the one-room living quarters:

The boards in front of the fireplace are covering a hole where excavators discovered small sea shells only found in the Caribbean - memories of home. They also found small slates and chalk [so the parents could help their children learn to read and write]. The slaves would hide these precious items there for safe-keeping. Quite a difference between this house and Jefferson's! There was so much that we learned about the life of the slaves and their horrible treatment. Just too much to tell here - and too emotional as well!

Where Jefferson was buried:

Our last stop of the day was Appomattox. They gave us a map of what the village would have looked like in April of 1865, but only a very few buildings are still standing. The most important of those, of course, is the McLean house where Lee officially surrendered to Grant.

This is the room where the signing took place:

This is Lee and Grant taking a selfie after 

the signing! [Grant is the smiling one.]

This is the courthouse:

This was our last stop because we still had 217 miles to drive to our lodgings in Charlotte, NC.