DEL.ICIO.USFROM ATLANTA TO ... MONTGOMERY, ALA.
Montgomery is rich with history of the civil rights movement
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Originally published March 7, 2008.
Marcus K. Garner / mgarner@ajc.com
Martin Luther King Jr. preached at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church while he was in Montgomery.
Scattered across Alabama’s capital city are sites that — in varying ways — document African-Americans’ struggles to overcome racism during that period.
Where it all started
A visit to the Rosa Parks Library and Museum and Children’s Wing (251 Montgomery Street, 334-241-8615, montgomery.troy.edu/rosaparks/museum/) on the campus of Troy University chronicles the years between Reconstruction and the civil rights movement, and the incident that spurred the battle against Jim Crow laws.
Through videos, pictures and sound, the primary exhibit of the museum recreates the scene of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery public bus.
What followed Parks’ heroic stance was a bus boycott that would stall Montgomery. The bus presentation is the museum’s account of all of the activity that led to abolishing the “separate but equal” laws in the South.
The Children’s Wing provides more context to the story of Rosa Parks and her contribution to civil rights, and the library upstairs houses a wealth of artifacts and documents from the movement.
Fit for a King
See the pulpit that helped launch Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight.
King moved to Montgomery to help with the bus boycott and delivered his message of peace and brotherhood from the pulpit of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church (454 Dexter Avenue, 334-263-3970, www.dexterkingmemorial.org). The church also was a center point for the boycott.
A large mural in the church depicts his civil rights crusade, from Montgomery to Memphis. And the Dexter Parsonage Museum (309 South Jackson Street, 334-261-3270, wwww.dexterkingmemorial.org), where King lived while in Montgomery, is just a block away.
Memorial center
Less than a mile from Dexter Avenue, you’ll find the Civil Rights Memorial Center (400 Washington Avenue, 334-956-8200, www.splcenter.org/crm/memorial.jsp), which, as a part of the Southern Poverty Law Center, outlines the history of the modern civil rights movement and honors 40 individuals killed during that struggle.
A bevy of exhibits is on display, along with several small computers that point to local sites significant to the movement.
A 17-minute film lays out a timeline of events, and a hall of monuments points to more recent victims in the continued struggle for equality in America.
Visitors are invited to add their names to the Wall of Tolerance, where more than 300,000 people have pledged to further the cause of civil rights and equality in their everyday lives.
The earliest struggles
The fight for civil rights had its origins on the campus of Alabama State University (1345 Carter Hill Road, 334-229-4876, www.lib.alasu.edu), and those beginnings are reflected at the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture.
The center, located on the north end of the campus, displays art exhibits and artifacts from the African-American diaspora — from suffrage aboard slave ships to slavery and abolition of segregation.
Getting there
From Lawrenceville, Montgomery is about 200 miles down I-85.
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