Scottsboro Museum: Uncovering a Civil Rights History Lesson

Bet you don’t know this! A story you (probably) don’t know. International visitors come to this small Scottsboro, Alabama museum to learn about a legal battle that they are taught in their distant countries… 🛑Yet it isn’t taught here. 🤷‍♀️At least not to me. ❓Maybe because it’s graphic. ❓Maybe because it’s an ugly reminder. 👉Maybe because it’s easier to start with a bus boycott than a falsely accused trial that sounds like a story right out of a Grisham novel. In 1931, a decade before the Civil Rights Movement started with that infamous refusal to move to the back of the bus… Rosa Parks and her husband fought with the NAACP for truth and justice. (The Communist Party even was involved. This made national headlines.) This first civil rights case made US history when nine black teenagers were accused by white women (and men) of a crime that never happened. 🔻That couldn’t feasibly have happened. 🔻That rallied the local lynch mob. 🔻That the Supreme Court intervened in. 🛑Yet the innocent men served decades in prison… {Learning American history with your kids is the best education… for both of you! Roadschooling at its finest.} I know it’s difficult to teach hard things. And some people (old and young) aren’t ready for the yucky details. But what a great lesson to our kids about how ugliness, honesty, standing up for what’s right… And that this isn’t just fiction. This was the world of their (great-) grandparents less than 100 years ago. 📍Save this little museum in North Alabama for your southern US road trip. Add some homeschooling to everyone’s day. One hour. It’ll stick with you. 👉👉Tell me your favorite history discoveries hike traveling. Y’all know I have a running list. . . . . .