Six Cities to Explore Martin Luther King’s History
Lists: From Atlanta to Washington, D.C., Larry Bleiberg highlights the must-see places where the civil rights leader lived and made history
Montgomery, Alabama
The Alabama capital was where King first became a pastor, and a historic figure. Visit his home, learn about his role in the bus boycott, and honor him and other victims of the civil-rights struggle at a moving memorial.
King was the senior pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (now Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church) during a key moment of civil rights history: the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, a 43-year-old seamstress, who refused to give up her seat to a white man, as required by the era’s Jim Crow laws.
As a relatively new resident, King became the spokesman for the protest and a symbol. He received dozens of threatening calls a day, and his home, the church’s parsonage, was firebombed.
- Civil rights travelers must visit the Parsonage Museum, which is open for tours by appointment. They’ll enter a homey scene from the 1950s and see the mark on the porch left by the bomb which smashed through a living-room window. The Kings’ 10-week-old daughter was sleeping in an adjacent room at the time. King later wrote that he nearly lost his courage at that moment, wondering if the boycott and the larger struggle for civil rights were worth endangering his family. History records the answer.
- The Bus Boycott, an unprecedented community-wide movement for equality, is honored in the Rosa Parks museum. Visitors enter a vintage city bus and watch a video showing how one woman’s act of defiance made a difference.
- Montgomery, Alabama’s state capital, was where many of the state’s discriminatory laws were passed into law. It was also the endpoint of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. The march, which made international headlines, finally reached the statehouse steps after violence and murder. It was here that King, addressing a crowd of more than 25,000, gave his “How Long? Not Long” speech.
- Those who died during Selma and in other places are remembered at a moving monument at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Civil Rights Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists their names. King, of course, is included, and so is the Biblical quote he cited during his “I Have a Dream” speech: “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Fittingly, the names of the fallen are covered with a thin sheet of rolling water.
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daniel 01.19.10 | 2:04 AM ET
I would add Chicago to this list, arguably the site of his greatest failure.
Larry Bleiberg 01.20.10 | 11:02 AM ET
Good suggestion. King said that he had never seen resistance like he had in Chicago. Said it was worse than anything he had seen in the Deep South. The Chicago Tribune just ran a good overview, including video: http://bit.ly/60t6OH