From Julie Posselt, in Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham:

Thunder's rolling as I sit beneath a huge magnolia tree in full bloom at Kelly Ingram Park. At the park's entrance, across from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, is a plaque reading "Place of Revolution and Reconciliation," in bold capital letters. It's almost too much for me, the ground my body lies upon is forever stained with blood.

From Amanda Gengler, in Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham:

I mustered up the strength to walk over to the church and went behind to the corner where the bombings had occurred. I sat down on the ledge and just began to cry. I felt the loss of those four little girls so profoundly and such a sadness for the suffering in the world and in all the people of the past … I felt so strongly that I had to do something to express my honor and reverence for this loss that I wrote on a small piece of paper a message to those girls: "I will always remember." I hope somewhere they can feel that. I folded it up as small as I could and tucked it into a little crevice of the church's foundation.

From Jerome Dotson, in Birmingham:

I couldn't help noticing the abandoned factories and the abandoned and graffitied buildings that were only a short distance from Birmingham's Civil Rights Institute.

From Miri Wexler, in Selma, Alabama:

When we were walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge today, singing freedom songs, I started to feel embarrassed, not because I thought strangers on the street would look at me funny, but because I thought the black students would look at us white students and think that we were ridiculous. It was almost as if we were romanticizing a brutal experience that is so painfully engrained in the Afro-American psyche and existence. I didn't want to be seen as a phony, as illegitimate. On the other hand, I know that my yearning to understand this struggle and the inequalities in our society is very real and I want to give myself and the other white students credit for knowing that this is the correct way to understand history.

From Steve Furrer, in New Orleans:

This morning our walking tour of New Orleans concluded in the old St. Louis Hotel slave exchange. The reminder could be seen on the side of the building -- "Change" was still there. Now it's an Omni hotel. When we walked in, the African-American doorman was polishing some of the brass fixtures outside the hotel. There was a gorgeous lobby. Our guide said that the place where the slave rotunda had been was behind me. I looked into the room, which is now a fancy dining and conference room. The most emotional part was that Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" album was playing in the background. I can't explain the emotions of these contradictions in their historical context.