Food Feature: Not the usual Selma pilgrimage

A walk through Sturdivant Hall

Selma, Ala., is famous for the 1965 civil rights march demanding the vote for blacks. Viciously beaten back by police, this pivotal battle galvanized support and helped ensure the passage a few months later of the Voting Rights Act.

My pal Janet and I were surprised to see what a charming little city Selma is now. It seems to have healed — as much as anyplace in this country can be said to have healed — from our history of racism.

We also found it to be a trove of wonderful old buildings. Our favorite was Sturdivant Hall, a splendid Greek Revival mansion built in 1852.

Selma feels unblemished by the modern. The town’s 58-block historic district includes commercial buildings with lacy wrought iron, and neighborhoods full of houses grand and modest. The leafy residential streets are racially well integrated now.

Down one such street is where we found Sturdivant Hall, set on a huge, shady plot. It’s a classic antebellum mansion, gleaming white, with long galleries behind a colonnade. Full of accurate period furnishings (and an impressive doll collection) it is now run as a house museum.

The house was designed by a Selmian (as they say), Thomas Helm Lee, a cousin of Robert E. He included a windowed cupola on the roof, reached by a narrow spiral staircase. When its windows are open, heat rising through the house creates a continuous natural breeze.

Right across the street is one of the few old houses in the vicinity that has not been restored. A seeming bumpkin with a thick-as-molasses drawl runs it as an antiques shop. The building is about to collapse, but his merchandise is museum quality. We stood around to chat — on a breathtaking oriental carpet priced at $50,000.

Sturdivant Hall seems to be something of a racial-historical touchstone. The old city seal featured the Confederate flag. The new, reconstructed one shows the Greek-columned house. The local Sons of Confederate Veterans held their “Alabama Secession Ball” in the mansion in January. And there’s still a row of bells on a wall facing the slave quarters — now the gift shop — that once tinkled to summon the servants. The bells are cute, what they conjure isn’t.

We were especially tickled by the response we got when we asked the docent who was showing us through the house — a white society lady with steel-blue hair coiffed into a perfect helmet — where to have lunch.

“Well my favorite place, now it’s clear over to the other side of town. But the people are just so nice. And they serve the best barbecue.”

Clear across town was a five-minute drive; the social distance was greater. Her favorite restaurant turned out to be a funky black-run storefront in a moribund strip mall. The food came on paper plates with plastic forks. But she was right about the barbecue.


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The 28th annual Historic Selma Pilgrimage, March 21-23, gives you the chance to enter many old buildings and homes normally closed to the public. For information, visit pilgrimage.selmaalabama.com and www.selmaalabama.com.






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