SARANAC LAKE — The public is invited to the second in a series of Conversations at Lake Flower Landing on Wednesday, July 6, at 7 p.m. at 421 Lake Flower Ave. These gatherings are free, with donations to benefit the Equal Justice Initiative.

Montgomery was a slave trade hub and the first capital of the Confederacy. It was where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a bus boycott against segregation and where police let a white mob beat Freedom Riders with baseball bats and pipes for coming from the north to register Southern Black voters. For generations, the city had little public memorializing of its oppression of Black people, while memorials to the Confederacy abounded.

Now, however, tourists flock to Alabama’s capital city to visit numerous civil rights sites, such as the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (which recognizes victims of America’s racial terror lynchings), the Rosa Parks Museum, the Freedom Rides Museum, the Civil Rights Memorial and more. These tourist attractions tell a serious story with hope reflected in a Maya Angelou quote painted on a mural downtown: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Ren Davidson Seward and Peter Seward of Lake Flower Landing recently visited Montgomery and were hosted by Joseph and Patricia Crowley, parents of Peter Crowley, who grew up in Montgomery and moved to Saranac Lake in 1999. Davidson, Seward and Crowley will lead the conversation with talk of growing up in Montgomery and what it’s like to visit there now.

Southerners and anyone with an interest in the Civil Rights history of the South are encouraged to join the conversation.