Week 69: Selma, Alabama

The Edmund Pettus Bridge is the famous bridge that black citizens from Selma tried to cross to march for voting rights, and the police stopped them and attacked them and knocked John Lewis unconscious. In the picture, I am pretty sure that the guy in the front with the blue suit and hat is John Lewis, and I am very sure that the woman in the yellow dress is Kamala Harris.

I have made it to a place in Alabama that even us West-Coasters have heard of, though maybe not for the best of reasons. Selma is not a very big city, with a population of 17,625, but it is famous for its civil rights history, and for a shameful day in American history.

The city is about 80% African-American, and it calls itself the "Queen City of the Black Belt," which Wikipedia says originally referred to the region's black soil, but took on an additional meaning referring to the ethnicity of the local population.

If I ever end up driving around Alabama, I would not mind going to Selma and taking a picture like the one posted here, even if Kamala Harris is not available to be in it.

Last week I wrote about tornadoes that had hit Sawyerville, Alabama in three different years. Selma had its own tornado earlier this month, as a large one tore up the downtown area, leaving it a "disaster area" and prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency.

This week I passed 5.5 million steps, so that's 11 half-million-step segments done, three to go. A little more than four months left.

Week 68: Sawyerville, Alabama

Sawyerville, February 2022

This week I am in Sawyerville, an unincorporated community in Western Alabama. Population is 795, with 88.5% of the population African American, so another small Southern town with a mostly black population.

Sawyerville experienced tornado damage in April 2011, March 2021, and February 2022. Combined, the tornadoes killed eight people, injured 73, and caused a bit of property damage, as you can see. You have to think almost everyone in town knows someone who was killed or injured by a tornado, or had their house trashed, or some combination of those outcomes.

It is 31 degrees here right now. Yesterday, it snowed a little. The forecast going into February is for highs in the low 40s, lows in the 30s and 20s. I am getting tired of this, ready for February to get a little warmer and a little lighter. I got spoiled when we had a week or more of temperatures close to 50 degrees. It isn't normally that warm here during the winter, and it didn't last. It's cold.

If one were to really walk all the way across the country, there would be days that felt great, and there would be others when you would just have to grind through it, put one foot in front of the other. These are grinding days. I'm ready to be done with winter and done with Alabama.

Week 67: Aliceville, Alabama

Aliceville Federal Prison

Alabama, you've got the rest of the Union
to help you along.
What's going wrong?

From Alabama by Neil Young

I have been to Montgomery, Alabama for a wedding, and it was very nice. The rehearsal dinner was at the house of the bride's uncle, I believe, and I remember thinking that they could easily seat 100 guests in the house. We sat outside; they could seat a few hundred more out there.

This week I am in Aliceville, Alabama, about 18 miles past the Mississippi border. Aliceville is a town of about 2,100 people, and the biggest deal in town appears to be the federal prison, which houses 1,647 inmates, so says Google.

It's a long walk across Alabama, all the way from west to east, and a long ways north to south as well, about 280 miles total. I will be here six more weeks at least.

My string of days over 10.000 steps per day ended this week, as I spent a couple of days away from home and doing a lot of driving. My new streak is one day, assuming I make it today, which I have not yet, but probably will. Also, I will stop going to Jubilee Bridge Club twice every week, at least if things work out at Olympia Bridge Club, so I won't put in as many steps as I did during December. Still, I have walked over 11,000 steps per day average as planned.

Alabama, Georgia, Florida. We're making progress.

Week 66: Tombigbee River, Mississippi

 

This week I am somewhere between West Point, Mississippi and Columbus, Mississippi, about where Highway 50 crosses the Tombigbee River. I had never heard of the Tombigbee River until this week, but it is a major waterway in the South, as much of it is navigable. The Tombigbee flows south from here and eventually empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama.

From the Tombigbee I only have about 20 miles left to go in Mississippi, so by next week I will be in Alabama. Only three states left, but still 850 miles.

One more thing about Mississippi before we go: According to USA Today, in 2012 Barack Obama received 10% of the white vote in Mississippi.

If I do make it there one day, I don't want to stay long.