Montgomery

We continued what Christine dubbed our "Civil Rights Tour" at the church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the congregation from 1954 to 1960.  Alabama's Capitol and the area surrounding it were eerily deserted.

Footprints in the adjacent crosswalk commemorate nonviolent marches from Selma to Montgomery in the Sixties that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.  

In 2013, the US Supreme Court struck down provisions of the act that monitored its implementation on the grounds that they were no longer were needed.  Chief Justice Roberts should explain that to Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia.  Her narrow loss to the white Republican candidate, who also happened to be Georgia's Secretary of State, was likely due to suppression of the African American vote by his office.  

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."  The more things change the more they stay the same.

Google offered no insight about what these crosses, planted in the lawn directly across from the Capitol, signify.  A vagrant tour hustler said they represented the increasing number of annual homicides in the city; Christine thought they might be associated with a pro-life event she'd seen advertised.  Their symbolism seemed fraught in any case, given the context.

Maya Lin designed the nearby Civil Rights Memorial.  It seems utterly genteel in comparison to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Water washes over a granite block engraved with the names of Civil Rights martyrs and the movement's significant events.  Clearly, given the current climate, the struggle continues.

The engravings are similar to those found on the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, also designed by Lin.

Newseum

The Newseum occupies some primo real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue.

You can see the Capitol and the National Gallery from the 6th floor balcony.

I didn't expect to find a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

Another gallery houses the antenna that once topped one of the Twin Towers.

It also includes Page One coverage of the 2001 terrorist attacks from around the world.

The gallery that shows how newspapers have covered a century of events appealed to me a lot more. Queen Elizabeth has reigned over the British Empire for as long as I've been alive.

A special exhibit focuses on "1968."  Here's how the Black Panthers covered the reaction to the 1968 Olympic protest.  Little besides the language has changed in 50 years!

Camera phones have transformed journalism almost as much as the printing press by turning ordinary citizens into reporters.

It's surprising how little of the world has a free (green) press.

And sad how many journalists and photographers have been murdered trying to keep the public informed.

But the Newseum's curators know how to lighten up, too.  There's an exhibit about "First Dogs."  If the current occupant of the White House pulled up a dog by his ears, public outrage would probably be great enough to impeach him.  But according to one of his wives, "he's not a dog person."

The bathroom humor is genuinely amusing.

UPDATE:  Due to poor attendance, the Freedom Forum, which funded the Newseum, sold the Pennsylvania Avenue property and closed its doors at the end of 2019.  In 2023, the building re-opened as a satellite campus of Johns Hopkins University.