The Civil Rights Trail
A new initiative makes possible Southern pilgrimages, on the ground or online
A motel. A department store. Elementary schools, high schools, and universities. The ruins of a grocery store, where fourteen-year-old Emmett Till shopped in 1955. The courthouse where his murderers were handily acquitted. Encompassing more than one hundred destinations across fourteen states and fifty cities, the newly launched U.S. Civil Rights Trail highlights places and spaces for necessary conversations about racism. “The line that brings all these sites together is, what happened here changed the world,” said Lee Sentell, director of Alabama Tourism.
The Civil Rights Trail, presented by Georgia State University and fourteen state tourism directors under Sentell’s leadership, was conceived almost by accident. During his two terms, President Barack Obama endeavored to increase diversity in the national park system as well as have more UNESCO World Heritage Sites designated in the United States—specifically by nominating important Civil Rights sites to that list. A team from Georgia State University spent a year compiling a list of Civil Rights sites and came up with about sixty places that would meet the minimum UNESCO requirements.
“When I saw those sixty sites I realized that nobody had ever done an inventory of Civil Rights landmarks,” said Sentell. “We needed to do something with this.” He consulted his twelve colleagues that make up TravelSouthUSA, a non-profit cooperative marketing organization, and asked each of them what is missing from the list in their state. Another forty-plus sites joined the list. Next came a comprehensive website that offers 360-degree video of landmarks in cities like Memphis, Little Rock, Birmingham, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Topeka, Selma, and Montgomery. An interactive map of each state lists the sites and shows their locations for road trip planning.
“When I saw those sixty sites I realized that nobody had ever done an inventory of Civil Rights landmarks.”
Perhaps most powerful are the video stories recounted by the freedom fighters in the thick of the movement. “These people are treasures, non-renewable resources,” said Sentell. Bruce Boynton discusses his 1958 arrest in a Richmond, Virginia, bus station that led to the Freedom Rides in 1961, and Bernard LaFayette Jr., the roommate of rides organizer John Lewis, recalls being attacked and beaten at the bus station in Montgomery. Lunch counter protest veteran R. Tyrone Patterson Sr. speaks of the first sit-in at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. Rev. Arthur Price Jr. talks about the history of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and tour guide Wanda Howard Battle sings inside Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery. Sybil Jordan Hampton of Little Rock, Katherine Sawyer of Topeka, and Dorothy Lockett Holcomb of Farmville, Virginia, discuss their experiences during school integration after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court decision. Mississippi state senator David L. Jordan remembers the Emmett Till trial.
The trail stretches from schools in Topeka at the center of Brown v. Board of Education to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963. Famous sites such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas; the Woolworth’s in Greensboro; the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; and Dr. King’s birthplace in Atlanta anchor the Trail.
Places where black people died at the hands of opponents to desegregation are scattered across the Deep South. The courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where two white men accused of murdering 14-year-old Emmett Till walked free in 1955, has been restored, as has the Jackson, Mississippi, home where voting-rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963 in hours after President John Kennedy proposed major civil rights legislation.
The 16th Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham, where four innocent little girls died in a racist terrorist attack, is an especially emotional stop, with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute located just next door to the church. The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Dr. King was assassinated fifty years ago, is another must-see that recently underwent a $28 million expansion.
Louisiana’s sites are grouped in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In New Orleans, the former William T. Frantz Elementary School, now home to the elementary school Akili Academy, preserves the legacy of six-year-old Ruby Bridges with a statue in the courtyard. By prior appointment, visitors can see Room 2306, restored to what it would have looked like when Bridges broke the color barrier by attending school. Other sites include the U.S. Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, the driving force behind the city’s school integration rulings, and the New Zion Baptist Church, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded. In Baton Rouge, the Louisiana State Capitol, a National Historic Landmark, was the endpoint of a ten-day, 106-mile march from Bogalusa in 1967 to raise awareness of the uptick in violence against African Americans nationwide. More than two thousand National Guardsmen and police officers on the steps of the capitol protected the six hundred protesters.
The Trail, which launched on Dr. King’s birthday this year, gives visitors the opportunity to literally walk in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, John Lewis, and other African-American activists. “Our hope is that this trail will educate, enrich, and enlighten our visitors and residents of our states,” said Sentell. “And make it easier for visitors to plan their pilgrimage through the South.”
This article originally appeared in our May 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.