In honor of Black History Month, we have selected important Civil Rights places to visit.
Table of Contents
National Civil Rights Museum
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. After being shot on the balcony. The former hotel is now a museum. It details both the history of the Civil Rights Movement and the life and contributions of MLK. The museum expanded to include more information about the ongoing struggles for civil rights around the world. It also discusses the capture, prosecution, and continuing controversy around James Earl Ray, arrested for King’s murder. The museum is located in Memphis, Tennessee.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Opened to much fanfare in 2016, this museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution. Showcasing the history, culture, and achievements of African Americans in the US to date. The exhibitions here attempt to cover the breadth of African American history and culture. The museum is located in Washington, DC.
The experience starts in the basement. Artifacts chronicling the horrors of slavery, such as child-sized manacles. Letters searching for sold loved ones. You then move slowly upward to cover moments of resistance. For example, the Civil Rights movement, and moments of breakthrough, like a collection including Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. Whitney Houston’s dress is also on display, to highlight the world renowned sounds of African American musicians.
New Orleans Treme
New Orleans’ Treme is the oldest African American neighborhood in the US. First and foremost, a lovely place to walk around. You’ll find the usual New Orleans architectural. A tableau of shotgun houses painted like a pastel rainbow, all set against a tropical sun. But it’s important to be cogent of history here; this neighborhood once housed free people of color, and later, liberated slaves. When the free people built St Augustine Cathedral, they made sure to purchase pews for their enslaved brothers and sisters. To this day, a cross formed from chains – representing faith in the face of slavery. It stands outside of the cathedral grounds.
Penn Center
The Penn Center is the site of the former Penn School, the first school for African Americans in the South. Founded in 1862, the school was only open to freed slaves, though three years later—after emancipation—that became all African Americans. The site continued to be a place of resistance well into the modern era. At one point playing host to MLK and serving as an educational site during the Civil Rights movement.
Today there are more than 50 historic buildings to explore on the property. Including a church, the original school, and a museum that tells the story of the Penn School. As well as that of the surrounding Gullah community—a distinct African American cultural group in this area. The Center remains committed to the cause of education and community development in the Sea Islands. Located in South Carolina.
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
Born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. grew up in an era of racial prejudices and legalized segregation. That would influence his life’s work. He was a religious minister and activist. He rose to become a national leader in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Dr. King sought to maintain an “abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind.
“Although most widely known for his leading role in the African American civil rights movement, Dr. King was a tireless advocate for the nation’s working class and the oppressed around the world. His life tragically ended on April 4, 1968, when he was assassinated. His legacy continues to inspire Americans today.
Memorial and Legacy
Located in downtown Washington, DC, the memorial honors Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy. It pays tribute to the struggle for freedom, equality, and justice. A prominent leader in the modern civil rights movement, Dr. King was a tireless advocate for racial equality, the working class, and the oppressed around the world.
Message to the World
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message was both American and universal. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he speaks of the freedom fighter’s disappointment in America defying its ideals. “There can be no deep disappointment where there is no deep love.” However, he looked to an entire world in peace and universal brotherhood. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“Arc of the Moral Universe”
He saw the wide swath of the “arc of the moral universe.” Ancient forgers of self-government, Augustus of a Republican Romana. Enlightened philosophers who imagined Utopia. Nonconformists of the 16th and 17th centuries who defied religious intolerance. Mahatma Gandhi, allies of WWII, Eastern Block dissidents of the Velvet Revolutions of 1989. He saw with crystal clarity the role of America within that arc. American Revolutionary War heroes, 600,000 Civil War dead, Civil Rights Movement Freedom Fighters, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and others in a journey still in progress. He saw Henry David Thoreau’s civil disobedience. Gandhi’s non-violent resistance was the best way to achieve the goal of the American Experiment. Do-nothings as the greatest obstacle. His example compels us to pull our pound.
Edmund Pettus Bridge
Few sites are as iconic to the American Civil Rights movement as the Pettus Bridge. On March 7, 1965, a crowd prepared to march to Montgomery. This was a demonstration against the murder of a local black activist by police during a demonstration for voting rights. As those activists gathered in a crowd, the news cameras of the media were trained on the bridge. A line of state troopers and their dogs, who proceeded to lay into the nonviolent marchers.
The March
The scene was broadcast on national television later that night. It marked one of the first times anyone outside the South had witnessed the violent response to non-violent protests. Booted policemen used nightsticks and attack dogs on peaceful marchers while whites waving Confederate flags jeered from the sidelines. Shock and outrage were widespread, and support for the movement grew. Martin Luther King arrived swiftly to Selma. After another aborted attempt due threat of violence; he helped lead what became 8000 people on a four-day, 54-mile march to Montgomery. Culminating with a classic speech on the capitol steps. Soon after, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Civil Rights Places
Today the bridge is just that – a bridge over the Alabama River used primarily for vehicular traffic. Check out the local NPS sites for more history and interpretation.
Little Rock Nine
Little Rock’s most riveting historic attraction is the site of the 1957 desegregation crisis that changed the country forever. This was where a group of African American students, known as the Little Rock Nine, were first denied entry to the then all-white high school. Despite a unanimous 1954 Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of public schools.
Images of national guard soldiers escorting students remain some of the most iconic records of the Civil Rights movement. There’s an on-site National Parks museum that offers some interpretive displays on the Little Rock Nine incident. Sadly, following the desegregation of Little Rock’s public schools, white students packed into private ‘segregation academies.’
International Civil Rights Museum
The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) is located in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. It’s building formerly housed Woolworths, the site of a non-violent protest in the civil rights movement. Four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) started the Greensboro sit-ins at a “whites only” lunch counter on February 1, 1960. The four students were Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond.
Events
The next day there were twenty students. The aim of the museum’s founders is to ensure that history remembers the actions of the A&T Four. Those who joined them in the daily Woolworth’s sit-ins; and others around the country who took part in sit-ins and in the civil rights movement. The Museum is currently supported by admissions and Museum Store revenues. The project also receives donations from private donors as a means of continuing its operations. The museum was founded in 1993. It officially opened its doors fifty years to the day after the sit-in movements in Greensboro NC.
Freedom Riders Museum
The 1961 Freedom Riders had a simple plan. Teams of black and white people would travel on regularly scheduled buses from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. Sitting together on buses and in waiting rooms and eating together in bus station restaurants. The goal was to compel the U.S. government to enforce Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregated transportation seating and facilities.
In the South, local laws and customs required segregated bus seating; as well as separate restaurants and waiting rooms for “colored” and “white” people. In some places, there were no restrooms or restaurants for “colored” passengers. Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 13 Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C., on May 4. Ten days later they met Ku Klux Klan–led resistance in Alabama. The vicious attacks in the Alabama cities of Birmingham and Anniston led CORE to abandon the bus ride, and complete the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans by plane.
Who were the Freedom Riders?
In Nashville, peaceful sit-ins by university students had just won fair treatment for African Americans in the city’s stores, restaurants, and theaters. At first, the students had not been sure nonviolence would work. But it had. Their mentor, James Lawson, had trained them to turn the other cheek when they were slapped or called names for being in “whites only” places.
When the sit-in veterans learned the CORE Freedom Ride had been derailed, they vowed to continue it. They had little support from the civil rights establishment and none from the U.S. government. They wrote farewell letters and wills, then made their way to Birmingham. Three days later, on May 20, they boarded a Greyhound bus to Montgomery.
Rosa Park Museum
In 1955, activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the whites only section of a public bus. This museum was set in front of the bus stop where Mrs. Parks took her stand. It features a video re-creation of that pivotal moment. It launched the Montgomery bus boycott by extension, much of the mid-20th century Civil Rights movement. You’re given a small opportunity to explore on your own, but otherwise, the museum feels something like an interactive movie.
Emmett Till Interpretive Center
In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was lynched in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with a white woman. An all-white jury acquitted two white men, Roy Bryant and JW Milam, who later confessed. Although lynchings had occurred in the South before, this particular murder galvanized anger like few others. It led to the first major wave of the mid-20th-century Civil Rights movement. This small museum, in the courthouse where the trial occurred, offers self-guided tours.
The self-guided tour includes a few displays about the trial and the public response. The courtroom looks like it did at the time of the trial. A staffer is available to answer questions. If you’re part of a larger group; call ahead to schedule a more in-depth tour and possibly a group dialogue about Till’s murder. The interpretive center can also recommend third-party tour guides. If you’re interested in a highly detailed look at the history.
It is remarkable how raw the wound of the Till murder can still feel in this area. In 2018, a sign that marked the spot where Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River was riddled with bullets.
Prominent African Americans in the Military
Buffalo Soldiers
During the American Civil War, the U.S. Government formed regiments known as the United States Colored Troops. In 1866 Congress reorganized the Army and authorized the formation of two regiments of black cavalry soldiers the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry and four infantry regiments designated as the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry Regiments. Black soldiers enlisted for five years and received $13.00 a month.
The 10th Cavalry was organized on September 21, 1866, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas with Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson as Commanding Officer. The 10th Cavalry served in the following campaigns: Indian Wars, War with Spain, Philippine Insurrections, and World War II. They were inactivated on March 20, 1944.
Their Mission
The Buffalo Soldier’s main charge was to protect settlers as they moved west. It was also to support the westward expansion by building the infrastructure needed for new settlements to flourish.
The Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry performed duties such as building forts and roads; riding shotguns on stagecoaches and mail routes; escorting cattle drives and wagon trains. Protecting the builders of the railroads; installing telegraph lines and protecting the settlers in areas plagued by bandits and American Indians. The American West has fascinated people all over the world since settlers first crossed the Mississippi. However, unless it includes the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers; any story about “How the West was Won” is incomplete without their story. There are multiple monuments throughout the country paying tribute to the Buffalo Soldiers.
Henry O. Flipper
Henry Ossian Flipper was born in Thomasville, Georgia, on March 21, 1856. He was born into slavery and spent his formative years in Georgia. Following the Civil War, he attended the American Missionary Association Schools in his home state. In 1873, Flipper was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy. He became the first African-American to graduate from the institution.
He has commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 10th Cavalry. From 1878 until 1880 Lieutenant Flipper served on frontier duty in various installations in the southwest, including Fort Sill, Oklahoma. His duties included scouting, as well as serving as a post-engineer surveyor and construction. He served as a supervisor, post adjutant, acting assistant and post quartermaster, and commissary officer.
Dismissal From the Army
In 1881, Lieutenant Flipper’s commanding officer accused him of “embezzling funds and of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” As a result of these charges, he was court-martialed. Flipper was acquitted of the embezzlement charge. However, he was found guilty, by general court-martial, of conduct unbecoming an officer. On June 30, 1882, the Army dismissed him as required by this conviction.
Throughout his life, Henry Flipper maintained that he was innocent of the charges that resulted in his court-martial and dismissal from the Army. He made numerous attempts to have his conviction reversed. He died in Georgia in 1940.
Correcting the Record
In 1976; descendants and supporters; applied to the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records on behalf of Lieutenant Flipper. The Board; after stating that it did not have the authority to overturn his court-martial convictions. The board concluded the conviction and punishment were “unduly harsh and unjust.” They recommended that Lieutenant Flipper’s dismissal be commuted to a good conduct discharge. The Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) and The Adjutant General approved the Board’s findings. The conclusions and recommendations directed that the Department of the Army issue Lieutenant Flipper an Honorable Discharge, dated 30 June 1882. This was in lieu of his dismissal on the same date.
Pardon
On October 21, 1997, a private law firm filed an application for pardon with the Secretary of the Army on Lieutenant Flipper’s behalf. The application was forwarded from the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) to the Office of the Pardon Attorney; Department of Justice, with a recommendation to approve the pardon. President William Jefferson Clinton pardoned Lieutenant Henry O. Flipper on February 19, 1999. In pardoning this officer, the President recognized an error and acknowledged the lifetime accomplishments of this American soldier.
Benjamin Davis Jr.
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., was a pilot, officer, and administrator who became the first African American general in the U.S. Air Force. His father, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., was the first African American to become a general in any branch of the U.S. military.
Davis studied at the University of Chicago before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1932. After graduating in 1936, he was commissioned in the infantry. In 1941, he was among the first group of African Americans admitted to the Army Air Corps and to pilot training. Upon his graduation, he was swiftly promoted to lieutenant colonel. He organized the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the first entirely African American air unit. They flew tactical support missions in the Mediterranean theatre. In 1943 he organized and commanded the 332nd Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen). By the end of the war, Davis had flown 60 combat missions. He was then promoted to colonel.
The Tuskegee Airmen
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses and helped encourage the desegregation of the U.S. military.
In February 1944, the 100th, 301st, and 302nd fighter squadrons arrived in Italy; together with the 99th, these squadrons of Black pilots and other personnel made up the new 332nd Fighter Group.
After this transfer, the pilots of the 332nd began flying P-51 Mustangs; to escort the heavy bombers of the 15th Air Force during raids deep into enemy territory. The tails of their planes were painted red for identification purposes. Earning them the enduring nickname “Red Tails.”
Though these were the best-known of the Tuskegee Airmen, Black aviators also served on bomber crews in the 477th Bombardment Group, formed in 1944.
A popular myth arose during the war—and persisted afterward. That in more than 200 escort missions, the Tuskegee Airmen had never lost a bomber. The truth was not uncovered until years later. A detailed analysis found that enemy aircraft shot down at least 25 bombers they escorted.
Nonetheless, that was a much better success rate than other escort groups of the 15th Air Force, which lost an average of 46 bombers.
