2021: Spring Break 2021 – Montgomery, Alabama
On my way home from Florida from my Spring Break 2021 trip I took the long way home so that I could stop and see several civil rights sites on the way. I had been wanting to make this trip for several years, and I am glad that I did so. This part of the trip is reflected in the next several spreads and is thought provoking and sobering. But I feel that it is an important part of American history that all of us should learn and engage. Therefore, you will notice that most of the next few spreads sharing this part of my trip are in dark colors and will have little ephemera as I want for the pictures to speak for themselves. There will be several photos of historical markers, and if you click on the photo above of the spread you should be able to zoom in to read them in detail.
This spread starts the journey of my civil rights trip in Montgomery, Alabama. I used Cricut Design Space to download the graphic of the State and used my Cricut machine to cut it out. I used the pen feature to write out the banner as I felt that it would be too small to accurately handle the cuts. The pictures are bordered in either brown or copper, and I used a jagged edge tearing tool to create the wide borders on the spread. You will notice that the brown star on the right-hand page is the cutout from the map on the left-hand side.
The left-hand page has pictures from the historic dock on the river which was the largest slave trading port in the United States. Interestingly enough, the historical marker in this location only referred to “other important commodities” instead of using the word “slaves”, and you can see that someone marked that out and wrote “slaves” on the sign. I cut down the bottom two photos on this side so that they would fit better on the page, but also cause the reader to focus in on the words. I encourage you to click on the graphic above and zoom in to read this sign which I think probably is a white washing of actual history. In the next spread you will see other historical markers which are just up the incline from the river which do a better job of describing the history of the area.
The right-hand page is a picture of the historical marker commemorating the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and a statue of Rosa Parks which is nearby. The quote on the wall is from the side of the old location of the Legacy Museum, which is a site dedicated the history of slavery and mass incarceration.
As with the last couple of blogs, I am now also creating videos that show me putting them together and talking about the experiences as well as the techniques that I am using. So please enjoy watching this spread being created and assembled:
Categories: 2021, Civil Rights Museums, Spring Break 2021
MASCrapping 