MONTGOMERY, Ala. – In Montgomery, Jefferson Davis Avenue crosses
Rosa Parks Avenue, creating an appropriate intersection for a place
that formerly relied on Civil War tourism but that now draws
visitors to a growing number of civil rights attractions.
Events that made Alabama a civil rights battleground in the 1950s
and ’60s – Ku Klux Klan bombings, beatings of Freedom Riders and
the jailing of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. – are being
remembered in museums and historical preservation projects.
“Alabama stands at the epicenter of America’s second revolution,”
says Jim Carrier, author of “A Traveler’s Guide to the Civil
Rights Movement.” Dollar signs back up his judgment. State tourism
director Lee Sentell says black-heritage tourism is a growing part
of Alabama’s $6.8 billion-a-year travel industry.
“No other state has the quality or quantity of destinations of
what was a battlefield in the ’60s,” Sentell said.
Many of Alabama’s major attractions are found in a triangle formed
by Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma.
Birmingham
Birmingham was the first major Alabama city to develop its civil
rights history when the city’s first black mayor, Richard
Arrington, helped create a historic district around the park and
church where many demonstrations began. The city’s Civil Rights
Institute opened in 1992.
The institute takes visitors back to the time when life in Alabama
was separate and unequal. A major attraction is the cell where King
wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while incarcerated for
civil disobedience.
Across the street is the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site
of civil rights rallies and of a bomb planted by Klansmen that
killed four girls on Sept. 15, 1963. It was the 47th bombing in
Birmingham during the civil rights era and one of the reasons the
city was often called “Bombingham.”
Selma
In Selma, the Edmund Pettus Bridge stands as the emblem of the
voting rights movement. Alabama state troopers took tear gas and
billy clubs to marchers March 7, 1965, in what became known as
“Bloody Sunday.” Two weeks later, King led a voting rights march
from Selma to Montgomery, where it culminated in front of the state
Capitol where Jefferson Davis took the oath as president of the
Confederate States of America a century earlier.
King later called the march “the most powerful and dramatic civil
rights protest that has ever taken place in the South.” It led to
Congress passing the Voting Rights Act, which opened Southern
voting booths to blacks and made Mississippi and Alabama leaders in
the number of blacks holding public office.
Selma re-creates the voting rights march each year; this year’s
Bridge Crossing Jubilee is scheduled March 5-7.
The city also remembers the events with a homegrown attraction
called the National Voting Rights Museum. While the museum lacks
the fancy, high-tech attractions of some other museums in the
state, it is run by and has tours conducted by people who
participated in the bloody events of the 1960s.
“We feel it’s very, very important that people hear the stories
from the mouths of people who did it. What better way is there to
learn history?” asked Joanne Bland, the executive director, who
participated in the voting rights march as an 11-year-old.
Montgomery
In Montgomery, city officials have expanded the city’s old tourism
slogan – “Cradle of the Confederacy” – to add “and Birthplace of
the Civil Rights Movement.” Visitors can see the Dexter Avenue
King Memorial Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King changed from
being a local minister to a civil rights leader when he agreed to
lead a yearlong boycott of Montgomery’s bus system in 1955-56. The
boycott stemmed from the arrest of Rosa Parks, a black seamstress
who refused to give her bus seat to a white passenger as city
ordinances required. The boycott led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that integrated the buses.
Troy State University at Montgomery has opened the Rosa Parks
Museum at the spot where Parks was arrested. One emotional exhibit
features a vintage city bus with TV screens instead of windows that
show actors re-enacting the events that earned Parks the title of
“Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
A few blocks away is the Civil Rights Memorial, a black granite
fountain bearing the names of 40 people killed during the civil
rights struggle in the South.
Newly opened is the Dexter Avenue Church Parsonage, where King
lived in Montgomery. It has been restored with much of the
furniture he used, including the desk where he wrote sermons and
speeches.
More exhibits are planned. The old Greyhound bus terminal is being
turned into a museum honoring the Freedom Riders, black and white
bus passengers who were beaten by a white mob in 1961 for testing a
Supreme Court ruling that prohibited segregation in interstate
transportation.
The federal government has declared the 50 miles from Selma to
Montgomery the National Voting Rights Trail. Museums and displays
are planned along the route from Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in
Selma, where it began, to the Capitol, where it ended.
The Capitol plans were delayed two years ago after Confederate
heritage groups complained that Civil War history was being pushed
into the background.
“We’re still fighting these battles. There is still resistance to
displaying (civil rights) history,” Carrier said.
For many years Alabama’s tourism agency primarily promoted Civil
War attractions, such as antebellum homes and a hoop-skirted image
of long ago. Things began to change 20 years ago when – during the
administration of King’s old foe, Gov. George C. Wallace – Alabama
became the first state to publish a black-heritage tour guide.
The guide has grown dramatically in size, and nearly 1 million have
been distributed, Sentell said.
“To me, the Civil War and civil rights are not separate stories.
They are book ends of the same conflict,” Sentell said.
For Rep. Alvin Holmes, the longest-serving black member of the
Alabama Legislature, the droves of tourists visiting civil rights
and black-heritage attractions is an amazing site.
“I never dreamed in the ’60s when we were marching, getting beat
up by brutal police officers and going to jail that one day
thousands of people would come to see these sites. I thought many
of the people who were killed would never be remembered,” he
said.
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If you go
Here is a sampling of civil rights attractions in Alabama by city.
BIRMINGHAM: Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (520 16th St. North)
traces the civil rights struggle in the South.
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (16th Street and Sixth Avenue) was
where a 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing killed four black girls.
Kelly Ingram Park (across from the church, between 16th and 17th
streets) was the site of numerous civil rights protests. Four
sculptures of demonstrators being attacked by police dogs and water
hoses are vivid reminders of the police violence.
MONTGOMERY: Rosa Parks Museum (252 Montgomery St.) salutes the
woman whose arrest prompted the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church (454 Dexter Ave.) is
where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor while
leading the bus boycott.
The state Capitol (600 Dexter Ave.) is where the
Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march ended in 1965 and where
Gov. George Wallace made his “segregation forever” speech in 1963
and Jefferson Davis took the oath as president of the Confederacy
in 1861.
The Dexter Avenue Church Parsonage (309 S. Jackson St.) is the home
where King lived in Montgomery; it was restored recently with many
of the furnishings he used.
The Greyhound Bus Terminal (210 S. Court St.) is where the Freedom
Riders were beaten in 1961. It is closed now, but a museum is
planned.
The First Baptist Church (347 N. Ripley St.) and Holt Street
Baptist Church (903 S. Holt St.) were the site of many rallies.
SELMA: The Edmund Pettus Bridge (U.S. 80 across the Alabama River)
was the site where voting rights marchers were beaten in 1965.
The National Voting Rights Museum (1012 Water Ave.) traces the
battle for the right to vote.
Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church (410 Martin Luther King St.) was the
site of many rallies and where the 1965 Selma-to-
Montgomery march began.
TUSKEGEE:
The Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site (1616 Chappy James
Drive) is where the nation’s first group of black military pilots
trained in World War II.
Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site (1212 Old Montgomery
Road) includes 27 landmarks associated with black educators Booker
T. Washington and George Washington Carver.
BOOKS: “A Traveler’s Guide to the Civil Rights Movement” by Jim
Carrier (Harcourt, $14); “The Best of Alabama” by Lee Sentell
(Seacoast Publishing, $12.95; telephone orders available for an
additional $3.50 shipping and tax from 205-979-2909.)
ROAD: A 43-mile route between Selma and Montgomery has been
designated an “All-American Road” by the U.S. secretary of
transportation for the America’s Byways program. To help plan a
drive there, click on Alabama at the www
.byways.org website.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit the state’s official tourism site,
www.800alabama
.com or call 800-ALABAMA for help in planning your visit. Ask for
the 2004 Alabama Vacation Guide, which includes a listing of
black-heritage sites.
