Leaving Memphis, we headed first for North Carolina to see Matthew's house, and to celebrate his birthday on April 26th. The photos here include a few pics of the house Matthew and Mark found in Durham, but more will follow with the move in July. That move will mean we’ll have a place to stay at Matthew’s, with no further need for The Carolina Inn. And so it was a nostalgic stay this time, after so many visits with so many memories. This trip we were also able to catch Lindsay and Brian during their visit with Mom in Pawley's Island. As with the Boudreaux family, the grandkids took center stage, and Georgia and little Clayton ate up the attention. Mom soaked it all in. She was quieter and slower to get around, but at our urging, she ventured out to lunch with us at our favorite places.

From there, Mark and I drove to Montgomery to see the newly-opened Memorial for Peace and Justice, our part two on the Civil Rights Trail. It immediately brought to mind the National Holocaust Museum in its provocative and meaningful design and the natural materials used in construction. Eight hundred steel columns hanging from various heights from the ceiling, each representing a county in the United States, are engraved with the names of black persons who were lynched there. The sheer scale of the monument takes your breath away, considering the horror it represents. With this gargantuan project started in 2010, the Equal Justice Initiative headed by Bryan Stevenson has made a bold effort to advance truth and reconciliation. The message: we have to own our national tragedy of racial violence before we can make peace with those who suffered. What a powerful way to honor these victims so long ignored. The Legacy Museum complements the memorial with its particular focus: how enslavement morphed into mass incarceration. It tackles the disturbing fact that people of color are disproportionately mistreated and punished by our criminal justice system. Of course, we thought of the excellent documentary 13th, and Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy. To end our visit in Montgomery, we stopped by the historical markers of the bus boycott and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Martin Luther King made his rousing speeches to protestors in the basement. Thank God for documentaries like Eyes on the Prize that have preserved those moments for us.