Sam Williams Heritage Trail

25 Apr 2009

Sam and I are in Burmingham, Alabama for the NASCAR race tomorrow at Talledega Race Track. Today we took the Sam Williams Heritage Trail

In the Living Room

. Great time! Sam was born in Burmingham and lived here until he moved to Anaheim when he was 12. We started the morning by going to get an authentic southern breakfast. And we weren’t dissappointed. Perhaps you have read Ray Oldum’s A Good and Great Place. He is the one who coined the phrase, “Third place”–that place that is neither work nor home where friends gather. Both the family restaurant and barbershops of the Black community are expressions of third place. We started our tour at the Civil Rights Museum. When Sam was 12 his dad was a bus driver on the segregated buses of Burmingham. Because Sam’s mother also worked, during the summers Sam would often accompany his father to the bus depot and work the “color board”–the movable board, behind which all Blacks until Rosa Parks’ decision, had to sit. While we were at the museum, Sam told his story to a group of young African Americans. Afterwards we went to all the places Sam lived along with the church where he gave his life to the Lord and was called to ministry. To see Sam’s video account of this trip type in Sam Williams Heritage Trail on YouTube–pretty Classic!