The fun day at Birmingham

     March 11, 2015 was probably the coolest day of my life. Randolph school let my whole entire grade go to Birmingham! How cool is that? Pretty cool because Birmingham is the coolest place ever. The bus was alright, our bus driver was a woman and let me tell you she could not drive worth a flip. She hit the stop sign coming out of our school! Great way to start off the trip by wrecking into Randolph property. I was still pumped up with excitement, although I slept on the bus, it was a very relaxing nap and I woke up and we were at the Church! I get out and my first impression of the church was wow, lots of brick, but it was beautiful! And right across the street was the museum, which I thought was even cooler!
     The inside of the church is very pretty, and worn down looking, but you felt at home there. I felt so honored to be apart of this trip, let alone be sitting in such a historical place! Our guide was a volunteer, and he already had to be a special person to be volunteering his time to talk to us about a bombing. He was an old black man, with a gray sweatshirt on that was almost too small, and he was easy to talk to. Not only did he give great information on the history of the church and the significance of being there, but he gave us all great advice! He told us the most important people in our lives were our mothers and our teachers. And I couldn't have agreed more. I learned that only the head of Jesus got blown out of the stain glass window of the church, just the head. The explosion was in the back room of the church and 4 little girls were killed, another one was in the bathroom stall and had her eye blown out, but she survived. The volunteer told us that when the pastor, of the church during this time, went back into the debris, risking his life and not caring if there were to be another explosion, he found all four girls stacked on top of each other, and all of them were dead. How powerful. To think that God's presence was shown like that is a comforting and inspiring story. I loved it when he related things to God. Being a christian myself, church has always been apart of my everyday life. Waking up at 7 am on a Sunday to barely make it to the 8:45 service was how it has always been, and Sunday School followed shortly after at 10. I can't imagine having a bomb go off at my church. It would be absolutely devastating. To hear that to build the church before the explosion was $2600 to after the bomb $300,000 was unreal. After the video, we got to walk around and see the items they have on display in the church was very moving, but not as much as the museum.
     I got to walk to lunch with a group of my two best friends, and I felt so adult-like getting to do that. I felt free and trusted. They had never let anyone do that before, and it made me feel secure about myself because they let it happen with my grade! The museum was nothing like I have ever been to before. There were buses and tanks and mock up classrooms and barber shops, and sculptures. I have never felt so moved by a museum in my life. I can't describe overwhelming feeling that I got see the difference between a black classroom and a white classroom, or the difference between black and white casualties. I wanted to cry. The videos that were playing and the cruelty that us whites had against our own people was so much more than "sad" now. I was mad at our ancestors for acting that way and ashamed that we treated people like that. This trip allowed me to really understand what life was like in the 50s and 60s for a black person, not a white. And I would go again if I could.

This is the stain glass window that had the face of Jesus blown out from the church. 

This is were I felt the most inspired and compassionate about the events, The Civil Rights Museum