Road Trip IV

Destination Three:

Selma Alabama – Sometimes you’re given a shock when you arrive at your destination. It didn’t help that I arrived on a Sunday, tired from eight hours of drive, hungry with nothing open but fast-food. But my hotel (Saint James) and concierge made up for my dour mood. I took to the streets just before sunset and photographed the most obvious thing about Selma. That it was yet again a desolate shell of what was: empty, lonely facades awaiting a revival. The beautiful sadness of this town is that the civil rights movement had integral moments here. One can penetrate the memory and emotion connected with the bridge – a symbolic point of the Selma to Montgomery March. At the bridge I photographed its checkered metal-work girders overhead, a distinctive feature visible in old pictures of the march.

The housing projects surrounding Brown Church act as a modern day reminder that the color of the skin is still an issue in 2010. To have beautiful but rundown historical buildings and devote energies to a cookie-cutter housing project around landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement is a slap in the face and a suppressing push down for an African American attempting to move up. It says, “You’re different in a bad way so go and live there. Oh and by the way – you have the right to vote if you want to.” The housing project was there back in ’65. When I walked through – early A.M. with kids going to school, there was emptiness in the faces – both of parents and the kids. It was as if the struggle was over but what was it for? A new struggle needs to be defined to counter cultural inertia and political and economic shackles.
N.B. This is one of the areas known for its stance and eradication of the Jim Crow Laws, yet a photograph of the day compared with today shows the shadow of Jim Crow still present.

In many ways Pawhuska Oklahoma is similar to Selma Alabama. The physical characteristics of architectural and historical shells help make the comparison. But looking deeper one sees lost culture and memories. Pawhuska was a town built on cattle and oil. Selma was built on cotton and the confederacy. Now they are built on memories and those memories are tattered and worn. A creative economy built on industry and art would seem to be its only hope forward.

The other connection is suppressed culture – on being Native Americans and the other African Americans. Pawhuska is situated in a reservation. The Tall Grass Prairie is a natural reminder of Native American ways and in Selma we have a confederacy/civil rights tension at play. Possibly both towns are examples that cultural build up on the backs of suppressed culture eventually fails. Allowing each its own diversity and prosperity – life can weave disparate yet coherent tales. Diversity should be seized as a beautiful thing. It’s interesting that diversity in my mind’s eye is essential and interesting. It’s what I look for and gravitate to. Yet this same concept is what causes war around the world.

After a push to Montgomery to follow the civil rights trail to Martin Luther King Jr.’s church and the State House I headed north. Got off the highway and interacted with some down home Alabamians. Saw a confederate lovin’ man who had the aura of a hatin’ man. But then met some regular folk. One woman I was talking to about the situation of the blacks that exists now in Selma responded with – “Maybe it’s their determination.” A cotton farmer that I met while photographing his farm equipment said, “Whach you doin’ down here?” He thought I was picking his cotton and said, “You can pick as much of that cotton as you want.” Made me think of my trip’s theme song – “I Never Picked Cotton.” Of course I wasn’t pickin’ his cotton but I can see why he might think I was. Johnny’s song tells the story of a man so well. The man ends up killing someone because that someone tells him to “go back to his cotton sack!” The only thing this man was proud of was that he never did pick cotton! The power of a decision to define a life was represented by this simple song.

Lyrics: I Never Picked Cotton by Johnny Cash

Chorus:
I never picked cotton
Like my mother did
And my brother did
And my sister did
And my daddy died young
Working in a coal mine

When I was just a baby
Too little for the cotton sack
I played in the dirt
While the others worked
Until they couldn’t straighten up their backs
And I made myself a promise
When I was old enough to run
That I’d never stay a single day
In that Oklahoma sun

Chorus

Folks said that I grew up early
And the farm couldn’t hold me then
So I stole 10 bucks and a pick up truck
And I never went back again
And it was fast cars and whiskey
Long legged girls and fun
I had everything that money could bring
And I took it all with a gun

Chorus

It was Saturday night in Memphis
When a red neck grabbed my shirt
And he said go back to your cotton sack
I left him lyin’ in the dirt
And they’ll take me in the morning
To the gallows just outside
And in the time I’ve got
There ain’t a hell of a lot
I can look back on with pride

Chorus
Chorus