From Lisa L., Nashville, TN:

Our first day on the road with Etgar36! Montgomery, Alabama is our first stop of the trip. Halfway there a tire blows. I have never seen a raggedier tire in my life. We spent the next hour playing Frisbee, tossing a football, and listening to Josh play the guitar. As we start on the road again with a brand new tire I feel sufficiently bonded with my fellow Etgarians.

Once we arrive in Montgomery, our amazing group begins an introduction to the civil rights movement. At Martha’s Place we ate fried chicken, corn bread, mashed potatoes, and sweet tea until our sides were busting. Martha’s story is an inspiring one; she began her restaurant while on welfare with no one but herself to believe in her dream. Sixteen years later she is a successful businesswoman with an amazing restaurant that is constantly expanding. Her faith is incredibly inspiring considering the adversity she overcame to become the woman she is today.

Next, we visited the Rosa Parks Museum. Although I have learned the basics of Rosa Parks’ encounter in school many times, the reality of her situation did not fully occur to me until I saw the evidence and heard the personal experiences of people who lived the story. The civil rights exhibit revealed the degradation of blacks in public transportation in a way I had never known existed.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was our next stop for the day. They are a non-profit organization that represents people and groups to fight discrimination. We watched a video and walked around the waterfall monument dedicated to those who lost their lives to the civil rights cause.

We then traveled to Birmingham where we went downtown to Freedom Park. It is a park with monuments and statues detailing episodes of the struggle for Civil Rights. We were given a tour by a walking/living history book, Reverend Woods. He was very involved in the struggle and was often beaten and arrested. He made the struggle come to life for us.

We went to Mellow Mushroom which provided the best pizza dinner I have had in a month. I cannot wait until tomorrow.

Etgar 36 2004 at the very spot where Rosa Parks boarded the bus and started the revolution

Martha, owner of Marthas Place, sharing her inspirational story

Enjoying some of the best in Southern food at Marthas

Reverand Woods sharing his story with the teens in Freedom Park

Josh DeYoung, Josh Dubin and Aaron Backer at the Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery