Episode 231: On Dexter Avenue

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This is the Memory Palace.

I'm Nate DeMayo.

A postcard from the road out of Montgomery, Alabama, spring 2025.

I didn't know a thing about Sophie Bibb until I googled her while pumping gas at a truck stop off Highway 65, maybe an hour outside of Mobile.

And so I leaned against a silver-rented Hyundai and read a bit about her life and her work.

And the way they served, it seems, as an inspiration to many women throughout the first several decades of the 20th century, and guided what they chose to spend a good part of their lives doing as members of the Montgomery Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, named in her honor in a unanimous vote at its first meeting in 1895, 1895, 30 years after the South lost the Civil War, and nearly a decade after the flag at the Alabama State House flew at half-mast to commemorate her death.

Sophie Bibb was so honored by both the women of the UDC and by the state of Alabama.

For the nearly three decades she herself spent working tirelessly to honor the men who fought and died to preserve the right to own other men and women and children.

She and her husband, a prominent judge, owned an estate that at the time of the war was valued at $250,000, included 1,800 acres, vast corn and oat fields, a large home, numerous outbuildings, substantial holdings and livestock, and around 125 people who represented a substantial percentage of that wealth, both as taxable assets.

and as the labor that ensured the perpetuation and prospects for expansion of said wealth.

All while being 125 individuals, each with lives and dreams and talents and ways they liked their clothes to fit, and things they particularly loved about how certain friends laughed, or can make them feel better when they were tired or sick or sad, and had inherent value as human beings, though their monetary value was more important to the people who enslaved them, and to the short-lived federal government that fought a war to ensure that that would remain the case in perpetuity, but which lost that war.

to the enduring benefit of history and of humanity.

When Sophie Bibbs' husband died a few years before she did, the man's obituary noted that his prominence in and significance to Alabama society continued unabated after the war, though it laments that the Bibbs' wealth declined precipitously after the abolition of slavery, leaving them with an estate worth $40,000 and 25 acres, and thereby, quote, lessened his power of doing good.

And though I have my opinions, different definitions of doing good, of being good,

I will grant that before steering much of the Bibb fortune, however diminished, and so much of her energy to building Confederate monuments, Sophie Bibb spent the final years of the war and the early days of its aftermath

doing just about the only thing worth doing.

She dug up the bodies.

There were dead men rotting beneath the ground in shallow graves and holes hastily dug and hardly filled.

And she founded the Ladies Society for the Burial of Deceased Alabama soldiers to help locate the bodies on battlefields far away and give them proper burials closer to home.

They will grant her that.

But in her life after the war, after the headstones were set and the prayers were said, she rechristened her organization as the Ladies Memorial Association, one of many that cropped up in the fallen Confederacy, to prop up its memory, to erect statues and monuments, make heroes of traitors, and help make a myth out of a real war and falsely claim righteous aims, states' rights instead of slavery, self-defense instead of self-interest,

to weave a false narrative that fueled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, segregation, white supremacy.

And in doing so gave the women who came after her, most born after the war, their granddaughters and great-granddaughters, great-nieces of the Confederacy, a story to believe in, build community and identity around.

The Sophie Bibb chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy thrived in the 1900s, in a city where nearly half its population was black and therefore did not thrive by design, by law, by threat of violence, by actual violence.

The Sophie Bibb chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, like the rest of them, worked to venerate those who fought for the right to continue to enslave the grandfathers and great-grandmothers and great-aunts of their neighbors and fellow citizens.

They placed a star on the spot where Jefferson Davis stood when he took the oath of office.

They collected and organized his belongings in a reliquary, that is basically what it is, in the first Confederate White House, a home they raised money to preserve.

They worked with other chapters of the UDC to make sure textbooks spoke of the benefits of slavery, the happiness of the enslaved, the chivalry and decency of the plantation owners, the honorable gentility of their wives.

And in 1942, they put a monument up on the south side of Dexter Avenue in Montgomery.

America was at war, and the members of the Sophie Bibb chapter of the UDC, according to their public statements, erected the marker to inspire patriotism among the citizens of Montgomery.

And they chose to do so by honoring the man who fought a war against America some 80 years before.

And so now one can still find a marker, white marble, the size and shape of an old phone booth, maybe, that makes sure people know that by that very spot in February of 1861

marched the inaugural parade of Jefferson Davis, when he took the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America.

It also says that Dixie was played as a band arrangement for the first time at that event, though historians don't think that part is true at all, but really,

whatever.

I have read a lot about the civil rights movement.

I have seen so many documentaries, so many biopics of its figures and movies about its events, each of varying degrees of historical fidelity.

Took whole courses in college, wrote timed essays in longhand and blue booklets to demonstrate my understanding of events that took place in a time that felt, still feels, like long ago to me.

Born as I was a decade and more after most of its incidents, the way that all things that happened before your time feel like they were from another entirely, but aren't, are closer than they appear.

And despite all that, I did not know until I was sitting on the steps of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, which Martin Luther King Jr.

led from 1954 to 1960.

I didn't know that it was right there at the foot of the small rise that leads to the Statehouse in Montgomery.

I had come because I wanted to go inside the church.

I wanted to sit in a pew to see if I could feel his presence, Dr.

King, but couldn't.

It was a Tuesday and nearly every civil rights historic site and museum in Montgomery is closed on Tuesdays and Mondays and Wednesdays.

But the first Confederate White House was open.

It was just around the corner, two and a half blocks, tops.

I didn't know it was right there either.

I didn't realize that when Dr.

King would leave work, walk home for lunch or dinner with Coretta and the kids.

You know, some summer evening when he'd stayed late for some service at the church or just taking care of administrative stuff, paperwork that dragged on.

And he would step out into this sticky Alabama July, maybe happy that there was still some daylight left.

The fastest route to his home, Decatur to Washington to Jackson, would have him walking right by the home of Jefferson Davis.

the man who founded a whole nation to try to ensure the enslavement of King's forebears.

And he would walk by right across the street, the building where white legislators were right then in 1955, 1960, working to pass laws to continue his subjugation.

I didn't realize that.

Nor that his home was quite so close, 15 minutes on foot, or that his wasn't the only historic home on the block, because Dr.

Richard Harris lived there too, a former Tuskegee airman, and a pharmacist who took in 33 Freedom Riders after they were met at the Greyhound station not by the local police as had been promised, but by a mob of white people armed with baseball bats and pipes.

And I say white people because it wasn't just men, not just the ones that spring to mind with the crew cuts and white t-shirts, but women too and their kids too.

A mob that beat people bloody.

To be bandaged up by one of the King family's neighbors.

I hadn't known he lived so close.

And I walked to the bus station.

A museum now.

Closed that day.

Walked the way the National Guard traveled when they escorted those 33 people so they could continue their journeys, to risk life and limb again for literal freedom.

Walked past other churches, white churches, past the headquarters of the Alabama Parent Teachers Association.

Wanted to know what was said inside those walls when the Freedom Riders came to town.

What was said in the houses there on Union Street, how opinions were formed in there.

how plans were hatched, how votes were decided, baseball bats taken out of kids' closets by adult men.

Every house felt like a historic home.

I didn't know a neighborhood could feel that way.

And I didn't know, though I don't know how really, that when the marchers came from Selma, after their first march was stopped by a posse of police who beat people unconscious at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, after the second one turned back, and three white ministers were attacked by the KKK, one of them, James Reeb of Boston, dying from his injuries.

I didn't quite realize that when they finally completed the Selma march march on their third attempt after 19 days in the road, when 25,000 people, king among them, arrived at the steps of the Capitol,

they walked right by his church.

Walked for a bit along the same route that he took home to dinner, the same route Jefferson Davis once paraded down.

which I now knew because the women of the Sophie Bibb chapter of the UDC placed a marble marker there, to be sure I would.

There is another marker.

It has been there since 2012.

It sits on the opposite side of the street, the north side of Dexter Avenue.

It commemorates the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March that moved past that spot in March of 1965.

It is the same size and shape and material, and therefore one can assume the same weight as the marker across the street,

as though it were set there as ballast.

This episode of The Memory Palace was written and produced by me, Nate DeMayo, in May of 2025.

This show gets research assistance from Eliza McGraw.

It is a proud, proud member of Radiotopia, a network of artist-owned, independent, listener-supported podcasts from PRX, a not-for-profit public media company.

If you ever want to donate to support the show and independent media, you can always head to radiotopia.fm slash donate.

Radiotopia.fm is also a great place to go and find out about all the other Radiotopia shows.

And this is a particularly excellent time to do so because we have recently welcomed some really cool new shows to the family, including Proxy, which is terrific.

It is from Yoe Shah, who you might know from NPR's Invisibilia.

And here's the idea.

Each episode has a person who comes to Yoe with some kind of emotional challenge, like a social or personal personal conundrum that they can't figure out because no one in their life can relate.

It is a niche problem.

And Yoe scours the world to find someone who has been in the same highly specific situation before and offers some help.

You can kind of think of it as emotional investigative journalism on demand.

It is really cool and really clever and you will want to check it out over at radiotopia.fm.

You can follow me on Instagram and threads and on Substack at the Memory Palace podcast, on Twitter and Facebook at thememory palace and on blue sky where I am just me apparently at nate demeo

you can shoot me an email at nate at the memorypalace.us

you can find out about some upcoming events here in May and June of 2025 including a quick Midwestern book tour and a very exciting one-time only live show focused on my audiobook that will include a couple of its readers Carrie Kuhn and Lily Taylor, which is super exciting.

This is going to be at the Tribeca Audio Festival in New York on June 13th.

You can find information about all of those things at thememorypalace.us slash event.

And finally,

a bit of advice from me to you.

Listen, Mother's Day, Father's Day, it can be hard sometimes to figure out the right gift.

I mean, a lot of people have known their parents their whole lives.

And this day comes every year.

And you might be running out of ideas, but I am telling you, there is a book that works for any parent any gender any holiday and that book is the memory palace true short stories of the past I am not joking the amount of people who are coming to book events saying oh man I got this for my mom slash dad and they love it has been really surprising and cool and I'm telling you head to your favorite book buying place right now get your mother's day or your father's day sorted and heck get a housewarming present get your uncle's birthday present.

It is the exact right gift for the right person.

And it is a totally acceptable, inoffensive, can't-go-wrong gift for even the wrong person.

Yes, I am shelling my own book, but I am telling you, this book is the key to solving so many of the gift-giving challenges that you are currently facing or are gonna face throughout 2025.

You can just buy them now and sock them away.

I will be back with a new episode in a couple weeks, and until then, take care.

Radio Tokyo

from PRX.