26th
Annual Trail of Tears Ride
The 26th Annual Trail of Tears Ride is September 21, 2019. The Commemorative Motorcycle ride takes place on the third Saturday of September each year. The local ride begins in Bridgeport, Alabama and ends in Waterloo, Alabama.
There is an unescorted ride that starts in Cherokee, North Carolina at 10:00 AM EDT to Ross’ Landing in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Friday, September 20, 2019. Riders leave from Chattanooga at 3:00 PM EDT and continue to Bridgeport, with the riders lining up in downtown Bridgeport on Alabama Street beginning at 7:00 AM CDT. The City of Bridgeport will close off the downtown streets to line up the motorcycles.
Madison, Alabama will be the official lunch stop at
12:00 noon CDT. Redstone Harley-Davidson
will have food vendors on-site, live music from The Soul Shakers, giveaways,
and much more. The ride will continue
from there and officially end at 2:30 PM CDT in Waterloo.
Waterloo
will host a free three day POW WOW from September 20-22, 2019. The festivities will start on Friday morning
at 8:30. Vendors, great food, as well as
arts and crafts will fill the area for participants to enjoy. Organizers will provide free entertainment on
both Friday and Saturday nights.
For more information about additional rides and specific
details, visit www.al-tn-trailoftears.net
The history of why the ride exists involves the devastating
event that happened to Native Americans in the early 1800s. According to www.cherokeemuseum.org the Cherokee people in 1838 were forcibly
moved from their homeland and relocated to Indian Territory, now
Oklahoma. They resisted their removal by creating a newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, as a
platform for their views. They sent their educated young men on speaking
tours throughout the United
States. They lobbied Congress and
created a petition with more than 15,000 Cherokee signatures against
removal. They took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that
they were a sovereign nation in Worcester vs. Georgia (1832). President
Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court decision, enforced his Indian Removal
Act of 1830, and pushed through the Treaty of New Echota.
In May 1838, United States General Winfield Scott was commanded by the
President to round up as many Cherokee as he could in Alabama, Georgia, and
Tennessee. Authorities placed about
17,000 Cherokee in concentration camps near what is now Chattanooga, and over
1,200 were placed at a camp in Fort Payne, Alabama. Between May and June of that year, over 5,000
were moved down the Tennessee River by flatboat to Oklahoma. Then in June, a drought caused the water to
get too low to move any more. The United
States Government knew that conditions in the camps were deteriorating; Indians
were dying of dysentery and other illnesse, so the government decided to move
1,070 rebellious Indians to Waterloo, closely following the U.S. 72 Route
through North Alabama. From there, the
official Trail of Tears Corridor that we know today was established. Legislation was drafted to recognize this
route. The founding organization, the Alabama Waterfowl Association, used their
non-profit status to sponsor a commemorative ride. In the following years, the association sold
t-shirts and other merchandise to fund the placement of the signs and
historical markers currently placed along the corridor. Not only did this raise awareness of the
specific route, but it helped raise public awareness of this important piece of
history resulting in the deaths of over 4000 Cherokee and the removal of many
thousands of Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole on the Trail of
Tears.
Since the first ride in 1994, volunteers have organized the Trail of
Tears Commemoration and Motorcycle Ride following the original route taken more
than 150 years prior, in memory and in honor of the first Americans who walked
the Trail of Tears. (The AL-TN Trail of Tears Corridor Association, Inc.
provided much of the information for this 26th Annual Trail of Tears
Ride article.)