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
Selma, Alabama
Walk across the Edmund Pettus bridge, site of the last significant confrontation of the civil-rights era. Visit a museum, and read recollections of participants. Take a city tour, and see where King galvanized marchers.
One of the last cities to attract the attention of protesters, Selma flashed on the nation’s screens and conscience during the 1965 march to Montgomery. The searing images of protesters beaten as they reached the Edmund Pettus bridge are some of the most notorious scenes of the era, making the city a must-stop for any civil-rights traveler.
The 54-mile march, organized to support voter registration, took two weeks to leave Selma due to the violence. Two days after the first attack on March 7, 1965, remembered as Bloody Sunday, King led a symbolic second attempt, stopping at the bridge to kneel in prayer. Finally on March 21, protected by national guard and federal troopers, King led the five-day march on to Montgomery. The march is reenacted every year during the first full weekend of March.
- Civil-rights travelers will want to visit Selma’s National Voting Rights Museum, which includes clothes worn by the protesters beaten on Bloody Sunday and voting records, documenting how citizens were disenfranchised. The “I Was There” wall includes notes left by some of the thousands of marchers, recalling their memories of the events. The museum is open weekdays and only by appointment on Saturdays, so plan carefully.
- A 20-stop Martin Luther King Jr. walking tour features the Brown Chapel AME Church, where the march was organized and began, and the First Baptist Church, which was the home of Selma Campaign—the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC )—and where King spoke several times.
- The route to Montgomery is now a National Historic Trail, marked by historic markers and a National Park Service visitors center, located halfway between Selma and Montgomery. The Lowndes County Interpretive Center recounts the events in grim detail, including the deaths of several marchers, such as Viola Liuzz, killed by Ku Klux Klan members as she was driving marchers between Selma and Montgomery. The center is near the site of “Tent City,” the home of black sharecroppers who were kicked out of their homes when they attempted to register to vote.
Five months after the events, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the national Voting Rights Act into law.
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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