Editor’s word: This put up has been up to date with new info. It was initially revealed in February 2021.
“We’re not makers of historical past. We’re made by historical past.”
― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The battle for civil rights throughout the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties is such a big a part of the American narrative that the sooner struggles for racial equality might not be absolutely appreciated. That is very true when civil rights via the lens of the Black Lives Matter protests.
To know what the civil rights motion completed, you could stroll within the footsteps of those that fought for freedom and experience the civil rights struggle where history was made.
The U.S. Civil Rights Path was created in 2018 to protect and share the historical past of probably the most transformative occasions in America’s story. The path crosses 15 predominantly Southern states and Washington, D.C., the place pivotal battles for civil rights occurred.
The path is expansive; you will want to journey by street, rail or aircraft to start your historic experiences. There are greater than 100 places from Kansas to Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and up via the Carolinas to Delaware, the place you’ll be able to discover and expertise key moments within the civil rights motion.
Listed here are only a few noteworthy locations to think about in your Civil Rights Path journey.
Alabama
Birmingham is credited for the rise of the civil rights motion due to an important occasion on Sept. 15, 1963: the bombing of the sixteenth Road Baptist Church.
The explosion killed 4 younger Black women who had been attending Sunday college. Paradoxically, the Sunday college lesson that day was titled, “A Love That Forgives.”
The church bombing, which occurred three weeks after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., rocked the nation and galvanized civil rights activists.
Join our every day e-newsletter
Right now, the 16th Street Baptist Church stays an lively church, and its basement is a museum that honors the 4 little women. The museum additionally tells the church’s story from its institution in 1873. Its centerpiece is the Expertise Room, which accommodates a clock that stopped at 10:22 a.m. — the precise time of the blast.
Instantly throughout from the church are two different stops on the Civil Rights Path: the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Kelly Ingram Park.
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is a contemporary museum devoted to sustaining the story of the civil rights motion in Birmingham and Alabama. The Institute homes many artifacts, together with the door of the jail cell that held Martin Luther King Jr.
Kelly Ingram Park was a staging space for quite a few demonstrations in Birmingham led by King, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and others.
Right now, the park is a sculpture backyard that shows highly effective paintings to inform emotionally charged tales about Birmingham’s civil rights motion.
Different Civil Rights Path markers in Alabama embrace the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma — the location of “Bloody Sunday,” the brutal beatings of voting rights marchers.
The bridge was named after the previous Accomplice brigadier basic, U.S. senator and head of Alabama’s Ku Klux Klan, and it stays a vivid reminder of Jim Crow. Just lately, the stays of civil rights icon John Lewis had been carried throughout this identical construction the place he almost misplaced his life on Bloody Sunday.
In Montgomery, you’ll discover the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The memorial shows 805 hanging metal rectangles representing counties in the US the place a lynching was documented.
Additionally in Montgomery, a museum devoted to Rosa Parks sits on the website of her famed arrest on the bus.
Associated: 10 destinations where you can learn about Black history in America
Louisiana
The historic Treme neighborhood in New Orleans, lately made well-known by an HBO sequence of the identical identify, is on the Civil Rights Path.
Treme is the nation’s oldest African American neighborhood. It is also a neighborhood the place free folks of shade might buy land throughout the 18th and nineteenth centuries when the nation was nonetheless immersed in slavery.
Many museums are devoted to African American life and tradition. Simply steps from the French Quarter, Louis Armstrong Park is a public park that honors the jazz nice.
Associated: Traveling to New Orleans to find the real Big Easy
Georgia
A cease alongside the Civil Rights Path in Atlanta showcases the birthplace and burial grounds of civil rights chief Martin Luther King Jr. Vacationers can go to King’s childhood residence and pay respects to him at his burial website on the King Center.
Mississippi
You possibly can observe the Freedom Path, which acknowledges folks and locations that had a big position within the civil rights motion. It was created in 2011 to offer a roadmap to Mississippi’s civil rights historical past.
The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson is the one museum within the state that covers all the civil rights motion. Opened in 2017, it provides explicit consideration to the murders of Medgar Evers and Emmett Until.
TENNESSEE
Close to the banks of Mississippi sits the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum on the former Lorraine Motel, the place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Clinton Excessive College in Clinton, Tennessee, can also be an necessary website. It commemorates the Clinton 12 — a bunch of African American college students — who attended their first day of sophistication on Aug. 26, 1956, following the U.S. Supreme Court docket ruling in Brown vs. Board of Schooling.
Whereas Clinton Excessive College grew to become the primary public highschool within the South to be built-in, it was not a clean transition with protesters and riots, and the varsity was bombed after hours a 12 months later.
The Clinton 12 are commemorated with life-size bronze statues that stand in entrance of the Inexperienced McAdoo Cultural Heart on the town.
Associated: In Memphis, the National Civil Rights Museum honors a tragedy — and highlights an icon of Mid-century travel
VIRGINIA
A more recent addition to the Civil Rights Path is the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, which is critical to the Civil Struggle, in addition to the Civil Rights motion.
This Danville website joins Farmville and Richmond as one in every of three designated path websites in Virginia. Often known as “the final capital of the Confederacy” within the Nineteen Sixties, Danville was residence to a number of the most violent clashes in Civil Rights historical past.
The Accomplice mansion, turned public library, is now the Museum, and in 1960 a bunch of protesters staged a sit-in on the library. Somewhat than admit Black guests, Danville officers selected to shut the library.
Different demonstrations for racial equality adopted, and all had been met with robust resistance, with the summer time of 1963 being the worst of the clashes.
Washington, D.C.
The District of Columbia was not a battleground within the wrestle for civil rights. Nonetheless, there have been fights for civil rights that occurred within the U.S. Supreme Court docket, most notably the seminal determination in Brown vs. Board of Schooling that made college segregation unlawful.
The Lincoln Memorial can also be the place Martin Luther King Jr. gave his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech throughout the March on Washington — one of many largest human rights protests in American historical past. There’s a marble marker on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the place King stood.
You’ll discover the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition alongside the Nationwide Mall. This Smithsonian museum is the one nationwide museum devoted solely to the African American expertise.
Associated: TPG’s guide to Washington, D.C.’s Union Station
Proceed exploring
There are notable monuments, museums and markers in different states alongside the Civil Rights Path that shouldn’t be ignored. Missouri, Kansas, the Carolinas, Delaware, Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia all performed an necessary position within the civil rights struggles.
The Civil Rights Path continues to develop as a result of new locations and sights are consistently added.
It’s value retracing the trail of “good hassle” to understand what leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis completed. We should expertise the teachings of the previous to allow them to be preserved for the longer term.
