During a landmark week, Anderson Monarchs learn about poignant past

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Last week, as their 23-day tour of civil-rights landmarks was about to begin in the Washington office of U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), the Anderson Monarchs learned that nine black churchgoers had died in a South Carolina massacre.

Three days ago, when the Philadelphia youth baseball team's vintage bus stopped two blocks down Decatur Street from the hilltop where Alabama Gov. George Wallace once defiantly declared "Segregation forever," they saw that, for the first time anyone here could recall, no Confederate flags flew at the Alabama capitol.

This ambitious trip to bloody civil-rights battle sites such as Birmingham, Selma, and this sleepy, steamy capital city was designed to inspire and inform the mostly African American youngsters. Instead, much to their surprise, the Monarchs have been encountering a new and powerful chapter in that history.

The Charleston, S.C., shootings, Alabama Gov. Robert J. Bentley's decision to remove the controversial battle flags a day before their visit here, and the U.S. Supreme Court's gay-marriage ruling Friday have lent their journey a new urgency.

"I've been telling them this stuff isn't ancient history," said coach Steve Bandura, the Philadelphia Recreation Department worker who has arranged several of these summer baseball-and-education tours. "A lot happened in my lifetime. I think Charleston and some of these things drove that home."

That lesson was captured by the message on the souvenir T-shirts some youngsters purchased after Thursday's visit to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial here: "The March for Justice Continues."

"These kids are going to walk around this memorial and see the names of all those who were killed in the cause of civil rights from 1954 through 1968," Joseph Levin, who along with Morris Dees cofounded the SPLC, said before the Monarchs' arrival. "They're going to think about what happened in Charleston, and they're going to know the struggle isn't over."

That might be why, as their silent reflections were being observed by reporters from CNN, Sports Illustrated, and elsewhere and filmed by ESPN, the MLB Network, and a documentary crew, the players lingered so long at the Maya Lin-designed memorial.

There, on a black marble surface beneath still waters, were the 40 victims' names as well as the dates and circumstances of their often-gruesome slayings.

"If you look hard enough into that water, you'll not only see their names, you'll see yourselves," Dees told them. "As you've seen recently in South Carolina, some of this stuff is still with us. So when you get back to Philadelphia, I want you to think about what you can do to help."

Seven of the Monarchs, including star pitcher Mo'ne Davis, played for the Taney Dragons team that reached last summer's Little League World Series. The players were prepped before the trip on the violent history that was going to be their focus, but they did not expect it to resurface.

The shootings happened on their first night in Washington, but because they weren't permitted to bring cellphones, they didn't find out until the following morning.

"We can't have anything [electronic] with us, so we don't always know right away about these things," said Bandura's son, Scott. "But it's kind of a neat coincidence that when we're learning about this history, all these new things keep happening."

At their meeting with Lewis, himself a civil-rights legend, one of the Monarchs asked the Georgia lawmaker about the murders.

"On your journeys, there are going to be times like this when you have to take a step back," Lewis assured them. "But you've got to keep marching forward."

But some of the parents, those on the tour and back in Philadelphia, weren't so sanguine. A few, Steve Bandura said, considered bringing their children home after Charleston. The youngsters, meanwhile, never expressed that concern.

"These are good kids, and most of them have experienced racism in some form or another," said Alison Sprague, the mother of Jared Sprague-Lott. "They didn't need Charleston to remind them that these things happen, and not just in the South."

They were briefly frightened in Anniston, Ala., when they stopped to view the site of a 1963 attack on a Freedom Riders bus. That's when they spotted an enormous Confederate flag flying from the closest house.

"That scared them a little," Steve Bandura said. "I think they really wondered what was going on there."

Arriving here to visit the SPLC memorial and the Rosa Parks Museum, the Monarchs were among the first visitors since the 1950s to encounter a capitol grounds without any Confederate banners.

Because they're incommunicado while traveling in their 1947 Flexble Clipper bus, the players weren't aware of all that's been happening with the controversial flag.

"I didn't know, but I'm glad they're doing it," said Jahli Hendricks, when the flag's absence from the nearby capitol was pointed out.

They heard about the Supreme Court's gay-marriage decision Friday, in Selma. In that town, which time seems to have forgotten, they walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where in 1965 marchers led by Lewis were beaten back by police. That scene, aired nationally on TV, prompted outrage that resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year.

As the documentary crew's drone camera whirred and flitted overhead, Selma Mayor George Evans accompanied them on a solemn crossing of the Alabama River.

"This is what it's all about," Bandura told his team as it gathered near the foot of the bridge. "This is what we've studied for. Let's do this right."

It was the kind of warning his remarkably well-behaved group didn't appear to need.

Whether it's the good manners Bandura preaches or sobering events such as Charleston, the Monarchs have been eager, reverent, and polite during their stops and the formalities that accompany each.

"These kids get it," Bandura said. "When they heard about Charleston, they immediately made the connection. A couple of them said, 'Wow, this is Birmingham all over again.' They know this history, and they're really serious about learning more. This isn't frivolous for them."

During their earlier stop at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls died in a 1963 bombing, they sat spellbound through a lengthy presentation. Some of the Birmingham youngsters escorting them weren't as attentive.

"Did you see those guys sleeping?" Hendricks asked a teammate as they exited the historic church. "That was so disrespectful."

@philafitz