Chattanooga still choo chooing away

Chattanooga has one of the best city names in the US, courtesy of the Muskogean people. Until this week, the only thing I knew about the city was that Glenn Miller had a huge hit about it in the Big Band era with a song I don’t really care about. But thanks to that song’s fame, the train station was saved and we were able to spend a night there at a hotel that uses the old railroad cars as rooms. Not that we spent the extra $’s for that privilege .. a normal room was just fine.

Kehinde Wiley oil sorta spoofing Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ portrait of Ferdinand-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans.

At any rate, we really enjoyed our short stay there. About 20 years ago, they completely revamped a major portion of the Tennessee River waterfront and it’s a very friendly place for visitors and families.

The original Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres portrait of Ferdinand-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans.

The Hunter Museum of American Art is first-rate for a smaller city and we loved their curation of both local and national artists. The city was clean and attractive. Once again, this makes us wonder why Seattle can’t do better given that our per capital income is over twice that of Chattanooga and our tax rate is higher.

The only dark part of our experience was the story of Ed Johnson. In 1906, he was convicted of rape but the trial was so suspect that the Supreme Court issued a rare stay of his execution after an appeal. Hearing this, a mob stormed the jailhouse, grabbed Johnson and hung him from a bridge. This resulted in the only criminal trial ever heard by SCOTUS, which ended up convicting six people of Contempt of Court for aiding and abetting Johnson’s murder. If you hadn’t guessed, Johnson was black and the lynch mob was white. His conviction was overturned in the year 2000.

Memorial of Ed Johnson in front of the bridge he was hung from in 1906, along with the two African American lawyers who brought his case to SCOTUS.