Following Dr. King

It will be fifty years on April 4, 1964, since Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered.  I am hoping to honor his memory in some way with a trip to Alabama and Mississippi.  We plan to follow some of the Freedom Trail that he and others walked – and we’ll do other things to explore and discover these two states, as well as stops along our routes from and back to Minnesota.

When Jim and I first talked about a winter vacation, I asked to go to Alabama and Mississippi. They are the only two states remaining from the fifty that I have never visited.  In other words, I started from a premise of simply wanting to “check them off.”  At the same time, I wanted to visit the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham and a few other spots along what I called in my mind “the Freedom Trail.” 

But when I googled Freedom Trail, nothing came up except a walking trail in Boston.  I googled a few other terms and learned that a multi-state effort has just culminated this January (2018) in what is now to be called The U.S. Civil Rights Trail.   This effort stated just two years ago!  At first, it was going to be an inventory of the surviving civil rights landmarks.  Alabama’s tourism director, Led Sentell, turned to Georgia State University to help with that.  They compiled a list of 60 sites.  Then, Mr. Sentell got together with a dozen other state tourism directors, and together, they added to this list so that the locations now include 110 landmarks across 14 states!  (And, they expect more to be added.)

These are all included (along with an interactive map, histories of the sites and trail segments to drive) on a website, found at:  https://civilrightstrail.com.

In a way, I think it’s sad that it has taken us this long to put this together, but I celebrate that it has been done.  That time period of the 50’s and 60’s has so much still to teach us about inequality, the power of standing up for what you believe, and how peaceful protests can make incredible change --- very valuable for us to remember as we confront increasingly racialized violence and emboldened white nationalists.

Jim and I won’t be visiting all of these sites – and we’ll be spending lots of time not even thinking about the Civil Rights Trail – but we do plan to visit the Birmingham jail and Church, the bridge near Selma where Bloody Sunday happened, Martin Luther King’s home and church in Montgomery, and the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where he was killed. 

It amazes me that Dr. King was only 39 years old when he died.  How much he had accomplished in that short life!  And, I marvel at his wisdom: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  Sadly, his life ended because he would not stay silent about things that mattered --- and matter to this day.