I’ll throw in one more thing to do in Atlanta that has to do with the civil rights movement, and that is the Downtown Southern Food Tour with Atlanta Food Walks. What was different about the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute compared to other civil rights museums is that it is focused largely on the civil rights issues and movement in Birmingham and Alabama.

You will step onto a bus, which rocks and shakes as you leap through time, so it is entertaining for young kids but maybe not those that get scared too easily. A quick look at this home might make you think it is something you can either skip or only spend a few minutes looking around and poking your head into the basement where slaves waited until it was safe to continue on their journey. Begin the Civil Rights Trail in Memphis, home to historical sites from the movement, as well as soul, blues, and rock n’ roll music and the tastiest smoky barbecue. Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church was the scene of a deadly 1963 bombing. Montgomery is about an hour from Selma, or an hour and a half from Birmingham if you are going direct.

The exhibits then try to create an understanding of the effects of segregation by showing the differences in education, employment opportunities, and access to medical care. A third set of downtown signs will identify churches, stores and other strategic centers.

On display are a Ku Klux Klan robe and a burnt cross from a yard of a Huntsville house shared by a white woman and black man.

What was different about the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute compared to other civil rights museums is that it is focused largely on the civil rights issues and movement in Birmingham and Alabama. Another must-do site is Slave Haven, an antebellum home that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves seeking freedom in the north. This page was last modified on 4 April 2016, at 08:15. Thank you for this. After studying Civil Rights in school, reading books like The Watsons go to Birmingham, and watching movies like Selma, she wanted to understand more. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute This modern museum features a rendition of a segregated city in the 1950s, a replica of a Freedom Riders bus and even the actual door to the jail cell that held Dr. King. The church was the site of the 1963 bombing that killed four young black girls. We use technologies, such as cookies, to customize content and advertising and to analyze traffic to the site. It is only by addressing these issues head on that we can teach our kids the values that we want to instill and show them why silence and ignorance are not options.

It makes sense to start in Atlanta, the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr., and end in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel where he was assassinated.

The Orange route will focus on marches against the city’s segregation laws, while the Blue route will commemorate protests and boycotts regarding retail hiring practices and lunch counter discrimination. You can’t ignore the fact that the struggle for the words of the Constitution to really apply to everyone equally is ongoing. One of the figures is A.D. King, brother of MLK.

“The hoses, equipped with special nozzles, could knock bricks loose from buildings, and they were barely able to move under the pressure and pain of the water that pounded their bodies.”. The city is asking citizens to contribute shoes (or replicas) worn by the movement’s non-violent foot soldiers. The museum is small with just a few exhibits but it provides a deep dive into the Freedom Rides and lets you learn more about the brave individuals that took part in those rides.

Learn how your comment data is processed. After visiting the Civil Rights Institute, you can walk across the street and visit the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where the horrific bombing in 1963 took the lives of four young girls attending Sunday school. Learn about the history … Continued As you think of the 250 years that slavery existed in our country, it is easier to understand how racial prejudices have taken such root. The final stop in the museum overlooks the rooms in the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King and his team spent his last hours.

In addition to a visitor center, you can also visit the Dexter Street Baptist Church, where MLK, and his father before him, was a minister. Partners Points of interest in Birmingham’s Civil Rights District, on the edge of downtown, are within easy walking distance of each other. The non-violent protesters, led by ministers including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev.

You can get a sense for this by reading books, watching movies, and studying it in school.

The tour kicks off at Paschal’s, which still uses the same fried chicken recipe as when Martin Luther King, Jr. and his colleagues would meet at Paschal’s to plan protests and even the march on Washington. Vintage TVs show film clips of demonstrators being doused by powerful hoses and held at bay by dogs.

Comfort eating of comfort food! Learn about the history of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the people who bravely shaped it, and those who continue to fight for justice today.
Memphis (Note: Carnegie Science Center is closed on Sunday due to the Steelers home game. Nearly a quarter of the trail’s sites are in Alabama, a place many consider ground zero for the civil rights movement. Hannah and I both really enjoyed this museum and it was a trip highlight. In May 2009 the Birmingham City Council approved $1 million from the sale of a city-owned warehouse to the BJCC to be applied toward creating interpretive signage and marketing materials over three years. After the Rosa Parks Museum, we also walked over to the Freedom Rides museum, which is just a small museum, located in part of the original Greyhound bus station where the Freedom Riders arrived. Even though Queen is a New York-native, she is very well connected in the community (as you can tell by everyone waving as her van drives by), and keeps the tour very entertaining. We actually started in Nashville, because Southwest had a fare sale there and I have been wanting to see the Music City anyway. We both loved that it also includes exhibits on worldwide human rights. This is also why you saw such resistance to change and desegregation in Birmingham. Exhibits in the church and Civil Rights Institute describe the horrific crime that buried the girls (ages 11 to 14) in rubble; another girl lost an eye and more than 20 other people were injured.

Across the street, you can also visit the Legacy building, where the bullet that killed Dr. King was shot.

If you take a tour, the caretakers will walk you through the Middle Passage into slavery, talk to you about how the hymns and quilts passed the message of the route to freedom, educate you on how stereotypes in advertising were used to keep people of color down, and give you a glimpse at the bravery and ingenuity it took for the escapees and those that helped them. Designed as a self-guided tour, the route includes signs marking actual civil rights events that occurred on the very streets that are a part of this trail. Again, I did not realize that this boycott, which was universally followed by all African Americans and many whites in the city, went on for thirteen months!

Sign up for our newsletter and receive a Family Vacation Planning Kit! We spent three nights at the Loews Atlanta in Midtown, giving us plenty of time to explore the civil rights sites of Atlanta. Shuttlesworth and Dr. King were frequent speakers at the church. And that’s why it is so important to me to honor and cherish the efforts of the past.

Visit the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the site of Malcolm X’s address in support of voting rights, and the Selma Interpretive Center, where armed forces attacked the first wave of unarmed marchers during Bloody Sunday. The past is on display in Birmingham and the history of the Civil Rights Movement plays a major role.

On June 29, 1958, civil rights guards removed a bomb from the church before it exploded, saving the church from certain damage. Across the street, historic 16 th Street Baptist Church, a famous civil rights landmark that was bombed by Klansmen in 1963, killing four little girls. National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. Fred Shuttlesworth, were pressuring city leaders to overturn repressive segregation laws that divided blacks and whites.

Note: We received media rates or discounts for some of our hotel stays and tours, all opinions are my own.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was very involved in organizing carpools to help these women get to work. It only takes a minute and a half of stepping into the shoes of a lunch counter sit-in protester to check your privilege and get a glimmer of understanding for the bravery it took to stand your ground in the face of violence and the threat of death.

The sculptures around the Freedom Walk through the park are powerful monuments to the heroes and reminders of the challenges of the fight for equality and civil rights. A much-photographed sculpture on the park’s Freedom Walk shows three ministers kneeling in prayer during a march where they were met by police dogs and billy clubs.

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is the centerpiece of the city’s Civil Rights District.

It's one thing to read about a place or see it on TV.
The impetus for translating that work into physical signage was kick-started as an initiative of Birmingham mayor Larry Langford in August 2008, and handed to Director of Capital Projects Renee Kemp-Rotan to develop. Developed by Kinetic | Designed by Cayenne Creative. Full of stories about the glory days of jazz, he once played in Duke Ellington’s band.

As the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the meeting place of many civil rights leaders, Atlanta needs to be a part of any civil rights trip. They just start groups in the experience at the same time and after the initial video experiences, you are free to explore on your own. In the future the trail could be utilized by tour buses and for special events. I know that a civil rights road trip may not be at the top of your bucket list.

There are also some very good exhibits that focus on worldwide human rights and the ongoing fight for civil rights globally. Since city residents were so dependent on the bus system to get to work, especially for women, a boycott of that length was challenging. It was very powerful, but not a stand alone memorial. Kelly Ingram Park also has some of the informational photo signs that mark spots where events took place. The hate has to […].