October 25, 2025. Traveling from Boston (Waban) to Birmingham and Then to Montgomery, Alabama. October 25, 2025. Traveling from Boston (Waban) to Birmingham and Then Montgomery, Alabama. After a great visit on Monday with cousins in the part of Newton, MA called Waban, we flew out of Logan Airport to Birmingham where we just spent three days with friends who live there. This included meeting some good friends of our hosts which added to our enjoyment. We also got to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which our friend, Frank Young, had a significant hand in creating. It is a very moving tribute to the virulent hatred that prevailed in the south and probably the whole country which gave rise to the the civil rights movement. That movement included horrific violence and ultimately federal legislation on the subject. We stopped at the 16th Street Baptist Church where four young girls were killed in a bombing orchestrated by some white Ku Klux Klansmen in 1963 - the same year Frank Young and I graduated from college. We then went to the Negro Southern Leagues Museum - a moving view of the many African American baseball players who might have been in the Major League Baseball but for the color line. Willie Mays was there too. Next to Rickwood Park where those ball players happily toiled in the same sun in which their forebears worked the fields in bondage. After that we headed to the Irondale Cafe for fried green tomatoes, collard greens and other southern delicacies. Yesterday morning we packed up and took a Greyhound bus from Birmingham to Montgomery. Before we left, we visited the Birmingham Museum of Art. It is definitely a first class operation for which that city can be very proud. We got to Montgomery in the afternoon, checked into our hotel, ate and walked around the city in the night. The Alabama capitol building was resplendent as it was bathed in light. All very fun. Today we head to the Legacy Museum, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.