Alabama’s civil-rights memorials
There is no single “civil-rights trail” in Alabama, said Scott Vogel in The Washington Post. The entire state is filled with monuments and scars that tell the story of African-Americans’ long struggle for equality. Montgomery, the state capital, “will forever be associated with Rosa Parks and the 1955 bus boycott.” Martin Luther King Jr. was once senior pastor of the church now known as Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist, which offers regular tours. Birmingham, 90 miles to the north, once had a reputation as “the most segregated city in the South.” Now it’s home to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. On display there are the pale green bars of the cell in which King “wrote his famous ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’” and a replica of a firebombed Greyhound bus similar to the ones traveled in by the Freedom Riders, who advanced the cause of desegregation in southern towns. In 1965, Selma was the scene of a “bloody confrontation” between civil-rights marchers and police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Why ghost guns are so easy to make — and so dangerousThe Explainer Untraceable, DIY firearms are a growing public health and safety hazard
-
The Week contest: Swift stimulusPuzzles and Quizzes
-
'It's hard to resist a sweet deal on a good car'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
