The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
from WorldWeb.com Travel Guide

Civil Rights Movement marchers1

Events that took place in Alabama galvanized the Civil Rights Movement, forever changing the ways and attitudes of a nation. From Rosa Parks' courageous protest to the inspirational preachings of Martin Luther King Jr., Alabama's history is laden with heroes that united African-Americans in the struggle for equality. The state's streets, community halls and churches housed marches, rallies and protests that challenged segregation laws and demanded the right to vote for all citizens. Today, evidence of one of history's most significant movements lives on through historic sites, memorials and museums. Whether it's walking the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where marchers were violently attacked on Bloody Sunday, or visiting the historical exhibits at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Alabama is an opportune place for visitors to learn about the Civil Rights Movement and pay homage to those that lost their lives during this defining time in American history.

HISTORY

In terms of racial equality, the United States of the 1950s was much different than it is today. The oppressive laws passed by southern states during the post-Civil War reconstruction period of the 1860s and 1870s, designed principally to return freed slaves to bondage in legal rather than official terms, remained in effect and permeated virtually every aspect of public life. Segregation laws required that blacks and whites be separated in public institutions as well as many private businesses, such as restaurants and bars. These segregation laws, most common in the southern United States, were referred to as Jim Crow Laws—named after a shabbily dressed black character from a popular minstrel show—and were present in a number of states, including Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming. In Alabama, for example, bus depots were required to have separate waiting rooms for whites and blacks, it was forbidden to serve food to whites and blacks in the same room and employers were required to provide separate toilet facilities for white and black workers. Such laws were often oppressive towards blacks, denying them equal access to public and private transportation, schools, voting booths, economic opportunities and housing.

	Rosa Parks being fingerprinted, 19552

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are among the Alabama leaders that challenged segregation laws and pioneered the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white man. Outraged, the African-American community boycotted the city's bus line, an act that triggered the start of the Civil Rights Movement. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized by Martin Luther King Jr., an advocate of non-violent protest and the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, an organization that demanded equal access to municipal services for blacks. In 1956, over a year after it began, the boycott ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of buses in Montgomery.

Racial tension was rising throughout the South, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was just the beginning. Spirited rallies, demonstrations and protests sprouted up in locations throughout the southern United States, where legal discrimination of African-Americans was most prominent. By 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, had earned a reputation for racial tension and strife. The black community's demands for desegregation were met with strong resistance, and in April of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. received a nine-day prison term for his role in desegregation protests. Powerful water hoses and german shepherd police dogs were used to quell riots, spectacles of violence that quickly drew national media attention to Birmingham.

The Selma-to-Montgomery March, 19653

Although several federal court rulings were passed in the 1960s to provide voting rights to African-Americans, local voter registrars possessed the ability to present obstacles, and large numbers of black Alabamians were unable to register to vote. Selma, Alabama, was the focal point of black preregistration drives in the early 1960s, and in 1965 a march from Selma to Montgomery was organized to express the plight of the disenfranchised. The march began on March 7, 1965, but was brutality interrupted at Edmund Pettus Bridge by state law enforcement personnel. A horrified American public witnessed Alabama State Troopers attack the peaceful demonstrators on the evening news, an event that became known as Bloody Sunday. When the march began anew on March 21, the ranks were flooded with supporters from across the nation, and as many as 25,000 walked the final stretch up Montgomery's Dexter Avenue. The march roused the emotions of the American public and swayed the U.S. Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required the presence of federal overseers in local voter registration processes.

Despite physical and economic intimidation applied by politically powerful white Alabamians, the numbers of registered African-American voters dramatically increased from 1965 onward as a result of legislation galvanized by the Civil Rights Movement. Although racism and discrimination had far from ceased, the movement fostered a transition to a changed nation, one that would honor the equality and rights of all citizens.

ATTRACTIONS

	Rosa Parks Museum4

Montgomery
Montgomery, the place where it all started, continues to pay tribute to its leaders and participants in the Civil Rights Movement through memorials, museums and historic sites. The city's spirit of remembrance is embodied at Montgomery's Civil Rights Memorial, a location of serenity where water flows over a table engraved with the names of those who died in the movement. Excerpts from the Book of Amos quoted in Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches are inscribed on the wall behind the memorial's table. Located at the site of the memorial is Civil Rights Memorial Center, which houses a number of exhibits and in-depth information about civil rights martyrs. The center is also home to the Wall of Tolerance, upon which the names of those that have pledged to take a stand against hate, injustice and intolerance are inscribed. Visitors have the opportunity to add their own name to the wall by taking the pledge.

Dedicated to the courageous stand made by Rosa Parks that inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery's Rosa Parks Museum is a 55,000-square-foot interactive facility that depicts the events that started the Civil Rights Movement and tells the story of its first brave soldiers. Perhaps the most engaging exhibit is a recreated street scene and replica of the bus in which Rosa Parks made her protest. Video footage transports visitors back to that pivotal 1955 day, and several other exhibits journey through the early developments of the Civil Rights Movement. In addition, the museum's 2200-square-foot auditorium offers multimedia presentations.

Martin Luther King Jr. Statue at Kelly Ingram Park5

Alabama State University, a significant institution in the Civil Rights Movement that was attended by several of the movement's prominent leaders, including Fred Gray, Fred Shuttlesworth, Fred Reese and Ralph Abernathy, has become an important facility in terms of civil rights history and preservation. At the University's African-American Cultural Center, visitors have the opportunity to see Civil Rights Movement exhibits as well as African-American cultural exhibits. Many visitors appreciate the unique opportunity to hear scholarly lectures and stories from those who participated in the movement.

Birmingham
Birmingham was also a major center of Civil Rights Movement activity, and the city's six-block Civil Rights District brings the events that took place here to life. A testament to the horrors of racial violence, the district's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was the site of the infamous 1963 Ku Klux Klan-organized bombing that killed four young girls. Grassroots resistance movements congregated and protested at Kelly Ingram Park, a site that recalls the harrowing trauma of police dogs and fire hoses used to suppress demonstrators in the 1960s. Events that took place at the park garnered national media attention and proved instrumental in overturning legal segregation laws in the United States. Today, the fight for civil rights that transpired at Kelly Ingram Park is illustrated through several commissioned sculptures that depict attacks on demonstrators, the children that served time in prison for participating in protests and the role of the clergy in the movement.

	Birmingham Civil Rights Institute exhibits6

An extensive chronology of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham is offered at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, where the lessons learned in civil rights struggles of the past are viewed as opportunities to learn and create a better future. Visitors have the chance to see movies, view photographs and explore exhibits that illuminate the climate of violence and intimidation that reinforced segregation in the southern states. A living-history wall features 12 screens that recount the history of the struggle faced by African-Americans for the right to vote. The museum's Birmingham: The World is Watching exhibit delves into the pernicious events that took place in Birmingham in 1963 and showcases the actual door from the jail cell where Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the famed Letter from Birmingham Jail. At the institute's Human Rights Gallery, issues from around the world are examined through a multimedia program and interactive displays. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has also conducted and preserved over 400 interviews with movement leaders, participants and historians through an initiative called the Oral History Project.

Brown Chapel AME Church7

Selma
Retrace the steps of voting rights heroes in Selma on the Martin Luther King Jr. Street Walking Tour, which features 20 memorials and a wealth of significant Civil Rights Movement historic sites. The city's Brown Chapel AME Church was the starting point for the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Marches, and in 1979 a monument to Martin Luther King Jr. was erected outside the building. Built in 1908, the church's Romanesque Revival style is impressive, and the interior can be toured by appointment. Another significant site on the Martin Luther King Jr. Street Walking Tour is the First Baptist Church, which served as the organizational headquarters for the Selma campaign for the right to vote. The Church was constructed by black architect Dave Benjamin West and is considered to be one of the most architecturally significant late-19th-century black churches in Alabama.

At the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma resides the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, a facility that explores the struggle disenfranchised Americans have faced to attain the right to vote for all people, regardless of race, education or social status. The facility features a window that looks out onto Edmund Pettus Bridge engraved with names of protesters that participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Several exhibits that highlight prominent figures in the struggle and important historic events are housed in the museum.

National Historic Trail from Selma to Montgomery
The National Historic Trail from Selma to Montgomery offers visitors the chance to walk the same route traveled by thousands of protesters in 1965, an initiative that marked the climax of the Civil Rights Movement and led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where protesters were attacked by scores of Alabama State Troopers on Bloody Sunday. The route along state Highway 80 serves as a testament to the protesters of many different races and nationalities that showed their support for equality and human rights, ultimately changing the face of a nation.

The Selma-to-Montgomery March, 19658

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PHOTO COURTESY

1. Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel; Civil Rights Movement marchers; AL, USA
2. Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel; Rosa Parks being fingerprinted, 1955; Montgomery, AL, USA
3. Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel; The Selma-to-Montgomery March, 1965; AL, USA
4. G. Brennan; Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel; Rosa Parks Museum; Montgomery, AL, USA
5. Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau; Martin Luther King Jr. Statue at Kelly Ingram Park; Birmingham, AL, USA
6. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute exhibits; Birmingham, AL, USA
7. Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel; Brown Chapel AME Church; Selma, AL, USA
8. Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel; The Selma-to-Montgomery March, 1965; AL, USA