Skyscraper

Experience in public stations has taught me that toil and care and disappointment are the price of official elevation.

--Jefferson Davis, 18 February 1861
Inaugural Address of the President
of the Provisional Government

There are no skyscrapers in Montgomery, Alabama. There is little elevation, man-made or otherwise. Unlike the snaggled skylines of the New South business centers, unlike the steep grades of the towns in the Smokies or Appalachian foothills, higher ground is scarce.

However, one place offers, in vivid detail, an elevated perspective of Montgomery, Alabama. In the middle of downtown at a place called One Montgomery Square, a beautiful fountain rises from the concrete at the bottom of a hill. From here, ground zero, a street named Dexter Avenue runs past a Baptist Church, and then that avenue ends at the top of the hill, at the feet of the pearly white Capitol building.

Some people call Montgomery the Capital City, current capital of the sovereign State of Alabama, former capital of the Confederate States. A few blocks away from this Capitol building, the first "White House" of the Confederacy still stands. A white house, yes, though not as white as the shining Capitol with its famous steps, inaugural pulpit to Jefferson Davis, George Wallace, the others between.

On the day of his oath, Davis asked God for the blessing of Providence, the same prayer of John Winthrop before he got off the boat to his New World freedom: God Almighty in his most holy and wise Providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission. This was his prayer.

Jefferson Davis and John Winthrop, dreamers--like that reverend doctor that once preached down this hill--asked for God's grace and Christian charity to shine down on the elevations they imagined for their peoples. Winthrop would build his City on a Hill, with steep grades that brought his people that much closer to heaven. But his model was followed, that same prophecy was fulfilled here, along this sovereign Confederate hill: some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission.

Among those others, Mr. John Moore, who on Wednesday, 3 October 1990, climbed to the top of the Capitol to replace the Confederate flag that had been stolen the night before. Mr. John Moore. More than likely a good man, honest and hardworking. A custodian, like many unseen caretakers, maintaining. But on 3 October 1990, in this legislatively minded place, John Moore became a representative. His inaugural message, a star-spangled testament to a defunct nation, born on these same steps in 1861, dead by 1865, but whose remnants linger. As James Weldon Johnson asked, O Southland, Dear Southland, / Then Why do you still cling / to an idle age and a musty page / to a dead and useless thing?

The residue still coats these walls, left to the toil and care of the appointed maintainers. John Moore. Elevated not under his own power, but lifted duty-bound to this official elevation. On 3 October 1990, Mr. Moore was a skyscraper.

Many have tried to elevate themselves along this avenue that stretches from the fountain to the hilltop. Many have marched up and down this hill, pushing onward, upward up that hill for voting rights, jobs, front seats on busses, and to protest the flag that flies (nation/state/confederacy) third from the sky.

Among those who agitated, two preachers from Dexter Avenue--the church down the hill--Revs. Vernon Johns and Martin Luther King, Jr. Maybe, on some Sunday, one of them preached from 121 Psalm: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. Those who lifted their eyes on 3 October 1990 might have seen John Moore's ascension.

When the Capitol building was renovated during the 1980s, a fence encircled the grounds. On an appointed day, Alabama's black legislators left their chambers across the street and attempted to climb...