The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama

Civil Rights Movement marchers1

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

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

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

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

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

Brown Chapel AME Church7

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