A Long Look at Montgomery
Civil rights and sizzling barbecue in the Alabama capital
Recently an unexpected assignment for Country Roads took me to explore Alabama’s long-abandoned first capital of Cahawba, and it seemed unfair to write about a ghost town that has been deserted for more than a hundred years without exploring the more populated current capital as well.
[Read that story here: Alabama's Ghost Capital]
What I did not expect was that my visit to Montgomery would amount to a sort of Civil Rights pilgrimage, profoundly educating me about the South’s complex and deeply troubled racial history. Fortunately, the heaviness of these lessons was softened however slightly by the loveliness of both the city and its people.
South Hull Street in the Garden District, where our GPS directed my boyfriend Dominic to turn en route to our bed and breakfast, exudes Southern charm: the residents clearly take pride in their well-manicured lawns and historic homes; an abundance of magnolia and crepe myrtle trees providing them shade as well as privacy in a neighborhood that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Our bed and breakfast, The Lattice Inn (1414 S. Hull St.), was impossible to miss with its namesake dark green lattice and owner Jim Yeaman watering the azalea bushes in front as we arrived.
I had selected The Lattice Inn because of its prominent Number One spot on TripAdvisor’s ranking of Montgomery B&Bs, but I quickly learned that this was far from our host’s first foray into tourism and hospitality. Before purchasing the Lattice Inn from its previous owners, renovating the building, and reopening the B&B in 2007, Yeaman had an impressive career in public relations and organization management—a job as the first full-time director of the city’s convention and visitors bureau brought him to Montgomery in 1968—which was evident in his degree of enthusiasm and thoroughness as he provided us information about the city. He now runs the inn out of a 1906-era cottage just four blocks from the Governor’s Mansion.
“It’s charming,” I told Yeaman as he helped us carry our bags into the house. He chuckled, “Thank you. Charming is the word.” I realized he must have heard this assessment hundreds, if not thousands, of times upon greeting visitors. It’s usually a subjective observation, but in the case of The Lattice Inn, there is no denying its charm.
The interior is even more delightful and somewhat nostalgic. With antiques in every corner and the same floral wallpaper from the building’s previous owners, the décor is admittedly dated—though only in the quaint ways a bed and breakfast should be. Modern comforts abound where it really counts: king-size beds, high-definition Apple TVs, and WiFi; Yeaman even subscribes to the Sunday New York Times as well as the local daily and makes a phenomenal breakfast spread. After checking in, my boyfriend Dominic couldn’t resist playing a tune on the piano in the parlor, which Jim noted was his grandmother’s that he had restored.
[Read this: 36 hours in the place that loves to write, eat, drink, sing, and talk about itself.]
All settled in, Dominic and I got back on the road, headed to one of the few restaurants in Montgomery open on Sundays: Capitol Oyster Bar (617 Shady St.). Jim had warned us of its “funky-ness,” an assessment we dubbed apt as soon as we walked through the door. With a deck overlooking a small marina on the Alabama River and a live folk rock band—led by Athens, Georgia-based musician Randall Bramblett— every table was full (which apparently is standard even without the music). The hostess pointed us to a large table near the band with two gentlemen already seated and enjoying beers. We sat down at the opposite end and attempted to introduce ourselves over the amplified guitars.
With admittedly low expectations for seafood this far inland, we ordered the “Shrimp Jammers” as an appetizer. My doubts fell away upon first bite of the Jammer, which is essentially a jalapeño popper inside of a butterflied shrimp, somehow still fresh-tasting and not overwhelmingly rich.
We followed these up with their steamed Argentina Shrimp, served “U peel ‘em” style with the shells still on and a side of melted clarified butter for dipping. Indisputably the highlight of the meal, they had the closest taste to lobster I’ve enjoyed in a smaller crustacean. Finally we tried a scallop po-boy, something I have yet to see on a Louisiana menu, and again were surprised by the freshness of the fried scallops piled plentifully onto soft, fully-dressed bread.
As we finished up, one of our tablemates, Preston Williams, caught that we were from out of town and said something across the table. Unable to hear over the music, I asked him to repeat himself: “Meet us outside!” he yelled over a saxophone solo. We settled up before meeting him and his friend John, standing outside holding to-go boxes.
“It never occurred to me that Rosa Parks was doing that demonstration across the street from where they used to keep the slaves when they got to town, or where the telegraph was sent to start the Civil War, or down the street from the Capitol,” Dominic mused. “It could have been another street corner to me… and it was.”
As a local born and raised in Montgomery, Williams seemed indignant that I had only parceled out two days to explore the area. Eager to help me understand the city’s rich history as deeply as possible in my limited timeframe, he offered to meet us the following morning and give us a tour. Sure enough, around, twelve hours later we rendezvoused in front of Court Square Fountain and learned about all of the significant events that took place within view:
“This is the spot where Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat. This building that you’re facing was the original slave markets,” Williams told us. “That building, the Winter Building, that is where the telegraph was sent directing [General G.P.T. Beauregard] to fire on Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War.”
The laundry list of nearby historical sites continued: he pointed out the Kress Building (of the same name as the building on Canal Street in New Orleans as well as many others), at 39 Dexter Avenue next to where Rosa Parks worked as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair Department Store. (The latter building has since been demolished; an open-air park opened in the space last summer.) When the current owners Mark and Sarah Buller purchased the former Kress department store, they discovered marble plaques denoting “Colored” and “White” above holes that previously housed water fountains. These labels remain on display in the recently re-opened building, serving as a solemn reminder of its segregated past.
[Read this: A new project commemorates the Baton Rouge bus boycott.]
“On the next block, that is the one of the oldest continually-family-run restaurants in the state of Alabama. It’s called Chris’s Hot Dogs (138 Dexter Avenue). It’s Greek-owned and is the only restaurant in town [in existence that long] that was never segregated,” explained Williams. “It’s also the place where Hank Williams Sr. wrote a little ditty called ‘Hey, Good Lookin’.’ A block and a half to the north from there is our City Hall, where Hank had his funeral that 200,000 people attended ... on the south side of the capitol, you see a little brown spire? That’s Martin Luther King’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he preached while he was here.”
Though we learned about many of these events in history textbooks growing up, Dominic and I never realized their physical proximity or how inherently connected they all are. “It never occurred to me that Rosa Parks was doing that demonstration across the street from where they used to keep the slaves when they got to town, or where the telegraph was sent to start the Civil War, or down the street from the Capitol,” Dominic mused. “It could have been another street corner to me… and it was.”
“Montgomery is full of juxtapositions,” said Williams. “Between Civil War and Civil Rights, ‘Dixie’ and ‘Hey, Good Lookin’’ ... We’ve come a long way, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
Thanking our voluntary tour guide and parting ways on a note of progress, Dominic and I hustled less than half a mile away to the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Legacy Museum (115 Coosa St.), opened April 26, 2018. Built on the site of a former warehouse, where slaves were imprisoned before being sent to market, the Legacy Museum viscerally depicts the enslavement of African Americans, the racial terror lynchings that continued long after slavery was abolished, legalized racial segregation, and contemporary issues like police violence and mass incarceration. By creatively implementing a broad range of digital media technology, the exhibit is able to depict these events in a way that is accurate, immediate, and consequentially devastating. Due to their unpleasantness and Western history’s inherent white bias, the stories highlighted in the museum are typically skimmed over in books and schools. However, such stories are vital to understanding the history of America, to reckoning with its past, and comprehending the racial hierarchies still present in society today.
We followed up the museum with a visit to EJI’s Memorial for Peace and Justice (417 Caroline St.), which echoes the sentiments of the museum in an incredibly powerful visual. Situated in a large square are thousands of metal columns, each representing a county (or parish) in the U.S., each with its own list of black individuals killed in racially-charged terror lynchings. To see the magnitude and prevalence of these killings depicted in such a sparse, powerful way summons intensely conflicting feelings: Sorrow for the countless lives lost to hate hits first, followed by an intense surge of responsibility to ensure blood is no longer spilled in America for reasons so senseless. We left heartbroken, guilty for the apathy of our ancestors but appreciative that such a memorial can exist in the city that experienced so many civil rights violations firsthand.
By creatively implementing a broad range of digital media technology, the exhibit is able to depict these events in a way that is accurate, immediate, and consequentially devastating.
As we started our drive back toward Louisiana, we can’t resist making one last stop in Selma, another Alabama town embedded with civil rights history. In 1965, local organizers, including Martin Luther King, Jr., led three marches from Selma to Montgomery to protest segregation and demand voting rights. Later that year, the Voting Rights Act was passed, but only after a great deal of bloodshed.
After driving over the same infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge the marchers crossed, we paid a visit to a restaurant that served both blacks and whites at the time of the marches, Hancock’s Barbecue. We left Alabama full of newfound appreciation for the history of the state and some incredible barbecue as well.
This article originally appeared in the February 2019 issue. Subscribe to our print edition here.