We say our goodbyes to our great friends and gracious hosts Cary and Terry.

Half an hour’s drive brings us to Hayneville, Alabama, southwest of Montgomery, where we find a memorial to Jonathan Myrick Daniels. I wrote about Jonathan in an earlier post entitled Redemption. Check it out for details.

In 1965, Daniels and colleagues were in Fort Deposit, Alabama protesting the community’s white-only stores. The local sheriff arrested the group and transported them in a trash truck to jail in Hayneville. We went to that long since closed and abandoned jail where Daniels and twenty-seven other colleagues spent six days in August in cramped quarters without air conditioning, drinking toilet water.

After their release, Daniels and three colleagues, including a young black woman, Ruby Sales, went to Varner’s Cash Store to buy the group drinks. Jim Coleman, sitting on the porch and brandishing a shotgun met them there. Coleman pointed the gun at Sales and threatened her. Daniels stepped in between Coleman and Sales, pushing her aside. Coleman gunned down Daniels in cold blood in front of witnesses. He never spent a day in jail. Daniels gave his own life that day to save Ruby Sales, his companion, friend, and colleague.

We visited the spot where this tragedy occurred to pay our respects and contemplate the short life of this remarkable man.

Then off to Selma, Alabama to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge which spans the mighty Alabama River that begins in Tennessee and George and which flows across the great state of Alabama from northeast to southwest, spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile.

In March of 1965, civil rights marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in three separate marches. The first march, on March 7, is known as Bloody Sunday because local “posses” attacked and beat many of the marchers. The second march occurred on March 9. The night of that march, a white mob beat and murdered a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who was there in support of the marchers.

These marches spawned a unified national protest and demands that law enforcement protects the marchers. The marchers were protesting to gain unfettered access to the voting booth in America. A right under the law that many localities in southern states systematically used every strategy they think of to oppose.

Despite the compelling national outcry Governor George Wallace refused to protect the marchers. President Lyndon Johnson had other ideas and committed 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard to the effort. Many FBI agents and federal marshals joined that force.

The third march started on March 21, with Dr. Martin Luther King leading the way the marchers.  Under the protection of the significant National Guard force, the marchers arrived at the state capital in Montgomery on March 25. Along the way, 25,000 people join in and gathered at the state capital and heard Dr. King say, in his How Long, Not Long speech,

“The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. … I know you are asking today, how long will it take? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.”

It’s just a bridge, but what a remarkable series of seminal events occurred here in 1965 when I was a clueless high school junior in Staunton, VA, a small southern town with its own history of racial oppression.

From Selma we take route 22 southwestward passing through little Alabama towns; Safford, Catherine, Thomasville, Grove Hill, Toddtown, Leroy, Wagarville, Sunflower, Tibbie, Deerpark, and Leakeville, Mclain and Beaumont, Louisiana, where we find, quite by accident, Lake Perry State Park Campground, on the shore of lovely Lake Perry. A sixty-eight-acre gem filled with bluegill, crappie, channel catfish, largemouth bass, redear and, and, and alligators.  That’s right, alligators.

I know, What the hell is a redear? Well, let me tell you. A redear is in the sunfish family, Centrarchidae, the same family as the bluegill. Also known as a shellcracker, Georgia bream, cherry gill, chinquapin, improved bream, rouge ear sunfish, and sun perch. It is a native fish of southeastern states. People in these parts prize it above bluegill, celebrating its ‘sweetness”. They fry them up in Cajun seasoning. Aren’t the names of fish fun?

We pulled into the campground in the late afternoon. Only one other camper. A few people fishing. Picked out a campsite on a point of land overlooking the lake, next to the, “DO NOT FEED THE ALLIGATORS” sign. The site had power, water, bathrooms with showers, all for $15/night. More highway robbery!

The camp host threw in the alligators free.

Two nights here for sure.

April 15.

Daybreak. Dead calm. The lake cloaked in a dense fog that creeps toward us. The sun comes up and hurries it along. Now glimpses of the lake.

A male Northern Bobwhite calls out, searching for a sweetheart. Great Blue Heron stalks breakfast in the shallows.

As the fog lifts the far shoreline comes into view.

Cathy Parker, the other camper, wonders by to say hello on her way to her fishing spot. Later, her husband stops by. They have five small dogs with them, two of which are Yorkies, and tiny ones at that at one and one and a half pounds.

Mac said, “at night shine a bright light at the shoreline, you will see their red eyes glaring back at ya. Don’t let that little Sawyer dog mess around at the shoreline. A big old gator might swallow him down and that will be the end of Tom Sawyer. And, by the way, watch the weather radar because murderous tornadoes touch down in these parts.”

We take a walk along a trail leading to an arm of the lake. Along the way, some good soul has placed markers that name the trees. Shumard, Post, Chinquapin, White, Water and Southern Red Oak. Longleaf, Slash, and Loblolly Pine. Yellow Poplar, Flowering Dogwood, Black Cherry, Southern Magnolia, Red Maple, Fringe Tree, Mockernut Hickory, Sourwood, American Holly, Mountain Laurel, Sweetgum, American Beech, Eastern Red Cedar, Black Tupelo Gum, and Yaupon.

Just to name a few. Aren’t tree names fun?

Down to the lake on our own private nature trail. In the distance, we see a big American Alligator. Too far away for a picture. I remind myself not to let Sawyer get too close to the lake’s edge.

Back at camp we while away the hours, watching young boys’ fish and a few people come and go. A pleasant evening comes on. As the sun sets a woman walks down to the lake and begins to play a Native American flute. The haunting melody floats through the campsite like this morning’s fog.

A fitting end to a good day at Lake Perry. Tomorrow we hit the road.

Tau Taino-Ti!

Good Spirits Be With You.