Montgomery: Personal Memories

The highlight of our trip to Montgomery has been a tales of two people, I will try and relate what their stories are.
While in the Capitol (the building, not capital, the city) We talked to the visitor greeter who worked for the Alabama History Commission, he was a black guy about our age, we talked about where we came from, he talked about himself. I mentioned that I really wanted to talk to someone ‘who was there’. Quite amazingly he said that he had been in Montgomery during the troubles, on further questioning he took part in the march from Selma to Montgomery. Further he was on the bridge when the State Troopers refused to allow them to pass and brutally beat the peaceful protesters. He showed us the scars on the back of his head where he was clubbed. He told us that he knew he would be alright, because his mother had said that he would be (his mother is still alive and is 100 years old). A trooper had come over to where he was lying and pointed his pistol at him, in his own words he saw his mother stand between them saying that he was not going to die. The Trooper pulled the trigger of his pistol five times and it did not fire! The man, Aroine Irby, told us that he then continued on the march (after several days it was eventually allowed to continue) and walked up Dexter Avenue, past the Dexter (now King Memorial) Baptist Church with Martin Luther King to demonstrate outside the Capitol building. He went on to say that bears no malice towards the State Troopers, but rather, he pities them for the hell they have to live through either now or later. We found this conversation to be quite moving, particularly as he is just a ‘normal person’, not a reenactor or employed to relate his story, but truly he was relaying hisstory. Here we were at a crucial time and place in world history and able to speak to a witness and participant.
While visiting the Dexter King Memorial Baptist Church, in itself a humbling experience, we were part of a tour group. While waiting for the tour to start we got into conversation. He was a man who had come from Birmingham that day, to lobby state congressmen. His mission was to lobby for the abolition of the death penalty in Alabama. Quite interesting I thought. To support his case he had written a book, which he carried under his arm, he was going to give it to the pastor of the church and hopefully gain his support. In casual conversation he said that he had been a doctor who had to give up his practice because of a neurological disease and cancer in 1999. He had returned to university and on studying the civil rights movement had come to the irrevocable conclusion that inequality in man was wrong, that he was a sinner and that Jesus was the only way to salvation. He gave the revelation that in 1963 he had stood on the steps of Alabama State University with Governor Wallace as a part of the movement to maintain segregation and had lived as a right wing reactionary until his conversion to Christianity in 1999. He was now spending the rest of his life trying to get the death penalty abolished principally because it was such a symbol of inequality. In Alabama more black people were executed than whites (I think he said 85% were black) and more blacks than whites are murdered.