Birmingham

By the time we made it to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, we had seen a lot of small and fascinating museums exploring specific people or aspects of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. The Birmingham museum was huge in comparison, also very interesting, but I think by that point we had become a bit museum-weary. We enjoyed a walking tour afterwards given by a random guy in the park who was able to explain in detail the meaning of the park's various artistic creations. We also came across some Occupiers, a small enclave but dedicated, and we stopped to talk to them about their movement.

After that, we were done with touring and ready for lunch. Someone recommended to me a place that sounded like the Birmingham Pie Company. OK, I thought, pie or something... they probably have sandwiches too. We followed her directions and found ourselves at the Birmingham Power Company. That's where people eat lunch in Alabama - the power company, an enclosed business park, places like that. It's almost like eating in the food court at a shopping mall, except that there aren't any stores, just offices. We never quite got used to that, but it seemed like a very common thing to do... so on our last day we had lunch in the lunch room of the Birmingham Power Company. It seemed appropriate. Birmingham, after all, was one of the places where young people took part in lunch counter sit-ins in order to force desegregation. After all the visiting and exploring and learning we'd done, after all the people we'd met, all the conversations about race, I couldn't help it... I had to count. I took an informal survey to see how many mixed race groups of diners were in that lunch room. Over the course of our 30-minute lunch, I counted nine. Nine groups of people who had skin of different pigmentation from one another and who appeared to be voluntarily eating together. We were in good company.