History Tour to the American South – Following the Civil Rights Trail

During your tour, you’ll gain the knowledge and insights of three half-day local guides.

Take a walking tour of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park, consisting of several buildings surrounding Dr. King’s boyhood home on Auburn Avenue.

View the original Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church where Dr. King and his father Martin Luther King, Sr. pastored. You’ll also see the Visitor Center and Museum, which chronicles the American Civil Rights Movement, and take a stroll down the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.

Take a guided tour of Dr. King’s birth home, led by one of this historic site’s park rangers.

Visit the King Center, where more than one million visitors from all over the world are drawn annually to pay homage to Dr. King. View unique exhibits illustrating his life and teachings and visit the King Center’s library and archives, the bookstore and resource center, as well as his final resting place.

Enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

Experience the Center for Civil and Human Rights. The Center is home to a number of both temporary and permanent exhibitions. One of the permanent exhibitions, titled "Rolls Down Like Water: The American Civil Rights Movement," has interactive components such as a sit-in re-creation, in which participants wear headphones that simulate the threats and taunts experienced by activists.

Continue on your journey from Atlanta to Montgomery. En route, you’ll stop in Tuskegee.

Tuskegee was founded and planned in 1833 by General Thomas Simpson Woodward. It’s an important site in African-American history and has been highly influential in U.S. history since the 19th century. The city is also home to Tuskegee University, whose founding principal was Booker T. Washington. During World War II, Tuskegee and the Tuskegee Institute were home to the famed Tuskegee Airmen, the first squadron of African-American pilots trained for U.S. military service.

This museum is part of the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site and is located on the campus of Tuskegee University. The George Washington Carver Museum has several exhibits, including those detailing the crop-rotation theories that helped the South’s economic boom as well as the history of Dr. Carver and his innovative work.

This museum recognizes the contributions of Native Americans, European Americans, and African Americans to the Alabamian landscape. It also showcases how the small town of Tuskegee played a major role in transforming Southern American politics and history.

Share the experiences of America’s first African-American military pilots and hear about the infamous study known as The Tuskegee Experiment.

Montgomery is a city rich in history, yet focused on the future. Once the capital of the Confederacy, it grew to become the center of the Civil Rights Movement—Dr. King preached at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. You’ll continue to Montgomery, which will be your base for the next two nights. While here, you’ll enjoy breakfast at the hotel.

Tonight, enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

Today will begin at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which only opened to the public in April of 2018. The memorial is situated over six acres and is dedicated to "the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence." The 800 steel monuments that hang overhead symbolize the thousands of lynchings that took place throughout 800 American counties and are a grim and sober reminder of our not-too-distant past.

Visit the Alabama State Capitol and learn about the history of the state and the Confederacy. The Confederacy began in the original Senate chamber in Montgomery. The site was the center of Southern radical activity and chosen as a meeting place for the seceding states because of the central location as well as good railroad and river connections to the south and east.

Visit the Rosa Parks Library and Museum, constructed on the site of the old Empire Theater where Mrs. Parks made her courageous and historic stand in 1955 during the Montgomery bus boycott. This interpretive museum occupies a building that also contains the Troy University Montgomery Campus Library. Six distinct and unique areas inside the museum tell of the early civil rights soldiers’ bravery and courage.

Enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

Continue on your journey from Montgomery to Birmingham. En route, you’ll stop in Selma.

Selma is best known for the 1960s Selma Voting Rights Movement and the Selma to Montgomery marches, beginning with "Bloody Sunday" in March of 1965 and ending with 25,000 people entering Montgomery to press for voting rights. This activism generated national attention to social justice and that summer the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress, authorizing federal oversight and enforcement of all citizens’ constitutional rights.

Explore the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, which was established to document the accomplishments and struggles of those dedicated to equal treatment under the law for all Americans. View exhibits such as The Women’s Suffrage Room, which reveals the largely unknown contributions of African American women who helped secure voting rights for half of the population.

Visit the Brown Chapel AME Church, where both the building and the members played pivotal roles in the Selma, Alabama marches that helped lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Birmingham boasts 99 historic neighborhoods and is often referred to as the cradle of the American Civil Rights Movement. Nestled at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, the city was once the primary industrial center of the southern United States. You’ll continue to the Birmingham area, which will be your base for the next two nights. Breakfast will be included at the hotel.

Tonight, enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

Take a walk around Kelly Ingram Park, which served as a central staging ground for large-scale demonstrations during the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Visit Birmingham’s National Historic Landmark, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. In September 1963, it was the target of the racially motivated 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four girls amid the American Civil Rights Movement.

This art-deco museum honors great jazz artists with ties to the state of Alabama. Exhibits convey the accomplishments of Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, and Erskine Hawkins, including the music that made them famous.

This institute is dedicated to recognizing and acknowledging the racial struggle throughout America’s social history. It is both a time capsule and a modern-day think-tank, focused on seeking equitable solutions to common problems. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute functions as a town square where the community gathers to discuss its concerns.

Enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

This evening, you’ll make the final entries in your Reflection Journal and share some of the most significant observations and perspectives that have taken shape during your Civil Rights tour. We’ll also discuss how these experiences may be most relevant for us all as we return home.

Your rewarding and thought-provoking Following the Civil Rights Trail tour comes to an end as your Tour Director accompanies your group to the airport on your final day.