Virtual reality exhibit 'Traveling While Black' Montgomery - Montgomery Advertiser

If you locomotion into Montgomery’s Civil Rights Memorial Center adjacent month, there’s a accidental you’ll find yourself seated astatine Ben’s Chili Bowl, a historical Black-owned edifice successful Washington. The diner was a haven for Black Americans going done the nation’s superior successful the 1950s and ‘60s — and present the mounting of a virtual world grounds coming to the CRMC connected Nov. 1.

"Traveling While Black," a 2019 VR movie directed by Roger Ross Williams, offers an immersive presumption of the dangers generations of Black radical person faced arsenic they traveled done the U.S. The grounds transports participants to the booths and luncheon counters astatine Ben’s Chili Bowl to perceive to honorable narratives from activists and historians who faced those dangers first-hand.

Tafeni English, manager of the CRMC, said she’s hopeful the grounds volition make a dialog for however those challenges persist.

“We don't person Jim Crow laws present anymore, but [Black people] inactive precise overmuch person to grapple with being harmless successful definite spaces,” English said. “I deliberation that that's going to beryllium truly important for conversation.”

The grounds examines the bequest of the Green Book, a usher that helped Black radical find information successful American cities for generations. The past Green Book, published successful 1967, listed respective locations successful Montgomery wherever Black radical could person nutrient and lodging without facing discrimination, including the Ben Moore Hotel and Alexander’s Blue & Gray Inn.

In the film, civilian rights activistic Courtland Cox recalls however helium archetypal noticed the actions taken by activists successful Montgomery to dismantle the presumption quo.

“I was possibly 14 years aged erstwhile I started seeing the challenge, the existent challenge, successful Montgomery with the autobus boycott, with Rosa Parks,” Cox says successful the film. “Just successful presumption of section proscription and interstate transportation, we had to look radical telling us, ‘You’re not bully arsenic we are.’ And present due to the fact that of radical who got connected the autobus and challenged the institutions that developed, you present tin imagination big. You tin imagination bigger than we could dream.”

The halfway has started preparations to recreate the wrong of Ben’s Chili Bowl. Once completed, determination volition beryllium six booths and a counter, which combined volition spot 15 radical astatine a time.

Visitors tin presumption the grounds from Nov. 1 to January 2023 for outgo of admittance to the center, which is $5 for adults. The movie lasts astir 20 minutes, followed by a abbreviated debrief with educators astatine the center. English hopes everyone gets a accidental to acquisition it.

"I'm hoping that not lone educators, but conscionable your mundane mean citizen, volition locomotion distant engaging successful conversations ... connected however the past precise overmuch connects to the present," English said.

Evan Mealins is the justness newsman for the Montgomery Advertiser. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or travel him connected Twitter @EvanMealins.

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