A two-week road trip from Nashville to New Orleans, meant good food, good music and a first hand look at the racism of our nation. Visits to the National Civil Rights Museum and Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum vividly told the difficult story of African Americans in the United States. At Slave Haven, we learned that the white family’s home which now housed the Museum, was part of the underground railroad. But the family had kept their story secret from neighbors until 1995. For my husband and I, that demonstrated how difficult the fight for civil rights was and still is!
And then there was the park ranger in Tennessee who, when asked about new forensic evidence that disputed the historic existence of a featured part of the Shiloh battlefield, the Bloody Pond, responded by declaring “when I was a boy, it was the Bloody Pond, and fake history and fake science are not going to change that!” In other words, if facts don’t fit his beliefs, he dismissed them. Frightening!
Interestingly, when we stayed at the Bazsinsky House in Vicksburg, Mississippi, we learned that this Bed & Breakfast was originally built in the 1840’s for a Jewish family and had remained theirs through four generations until early in the twenty-first century.
The day after we returned home, we joined our local Temple, Beth Torah, and members from the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Oxnard to watch a special showing of the documentary, Emanuel. Produced by Steph Curry (NBA star), Viola Davis (Academy Award winner) and Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU), Emanuel tells the story of the murder of nine people during Bible study at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., by a white supremacist. The documentary tells the story of that tragic day through the eyes of the survivors and family members of the victims. The film highlights the hope and perseverance of the survivors and loved ones of the victims who chose forgiveness and faith, and support for each other and their community. It was an emotional experience.
The Minister of Bethel A.M.E. Church invited viewers to attend a discussion group at the church the following week. We joined about 50 people and found an opportunity to listen, learn and feel the pain and pride of the local community.
As a children’s writer, I donated two of my books to the Church in the days that followed. The Littlest Pair is a picture book of Noah’s Ark that teaches tolerance, and Yosef’s Dream, a story of the rescue of the Jews of Ethiopia. Pastor Clyde W. Oden, Jr., called to thank me and then we visited him for a private and meaningful conversation. 
Is there a message in linking my southern road trip to the screening of the film, Emmanuel? I think so, and it recalls my reaction to my visits to two museums on the mall at Washington DC, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and National Museum of African American History and Culture. The first visit was devastating, but ended with victory over Nazism, the heroism of the American GI’s who liberated concentration camps, and the establishment of Israel with the support of an American President. But after my visit to the second museum, there wasn’t an ending, but rather the affirmation that the fight for civil rights and equality under the law has not yet been won.
The tragedy of Charlottesville, the racists rants of the current President, the shootings at synagogues, and the attack on Latinos in El Paso are only the most recent expressions of racist violence. Coupled with our southern road trip and the film Emanuel, these are all discouraging portents. But I have found comfort in the words from Abraham Lincoln’s first Inaugural speech, when he said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”