MEMORIES OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, AT THE UPCOUNTRY HISTORY MUSEUM (Cheri)

Greenville, South Carolina has several small but truly impressive museums. Down the line I want to see the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library, the Center for Creative Arts, and I'm sure Mark will be interested in the two or three military history museums.

Yesterday we made it back to the Upcountry History Museum and the Sigal Music Museum.  The are right beside the Children's Museum and the architecturally-striking main library.

Since we had been to the Upcountry History Museum before, we focused on the photos that student photographer Stephen Somerstein took of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that took place in 1965.

Most people are familiar with the pictures - or fact - of black Americans being sprayed with fire hoses in Birmingham, but I didn't know how much additional effort was put in, over a period of a couple of days, to continue this march afterwards:

Mark was struck at the difficulties Mr. Somerstein would have had choosing which scenes and issues to focus on with only 15 rolls of film to use.

I took several pictures of the photographs, but am going to include only two of them.

The late Congressman John Lewis was a major organizer of the march.  He wrote  three books about the march and related events, in addition to the book Carry On:  Reflections for a New Generation, which was published last year just after his death.  I think I will listen to the audiobook of Jon Meacham's His Truth is Marching On:  John Lewis and the Power of Hope.