Welcome back, arista!

As it's looking to be bitterly cold on Monday, I did my traditional MLK day run today. Started off running the length of my city's MLK Ave., then wound my way back home going past assorted sites with connections to local black history. This time that included 6 historic African-American churches, one of which has a hidey-hole in the bell tower that sheltered passengers on the underground railroad. On the depressing side, went past the site of a slave jail and the auction blocks (separate ones for house and field slaves). On the more positive side, I also included 4 schools that were part of the colored school system and the site of another, and did a quarter mile on the track at the old colored high school. Wound up the run going by a new elementary school named for William Wells Brown, the first African-American novelist who happened to have been born here (as a slave) and the cemetary. It was just shy of 7 miles, and that pretty much ignored the sites on the east side of town. It was not a fast run at all, as I stopped to read a lot of historical markers. Local history and running, what a great combination!