TOPEKA – The American Civil Rights Struggle Roadmap runs through the southern hotspots of Selma, Memphis, Jackson, Little Rock, Montgomery, Greensboro and Birmingham and extends to the western outpost of Topeka and the northern intersection of Washington, DC
The collage of sit-in strikes, protest marches, violent assaults, school dropouts, freedom rallies and legal disputes from the 1950s and 1960s are cornerstones of Jim Crow’s movement to overcome racial segregation. Historic victims of black campaigners for suffrage, educational opportunities, and job justice are preserved in schools, courthouses, homes, churches, and other landmarks that make up the U.S. Civil Rights Path and fill the pages of a new book that captures these scars and monuments of freedom.
The Civil Rights Trail, authored by Lee Sentell, covers the Brown v. Chr. National Historic Site. Board of Education and the Sumner Elementary School in Topeka as milestones in the nation’s pursuit of an end to racial segregation. (Sherman Smith / Kansas reflector)
Lee Sentell, author of the 128-page Civil Rights Trail and director of the Alabama Tourism Agency, said in a Kansas Reflector interview that the project aims to provide people with a glimpse into the checkered past so that they can be motivated to take the gift.
TThe protests against Black Lives Matter against deadly methods used by law enforcement officers reflect that era and help connect Americans and international visitors to the civil rights path, Sentell said.
“We want to encourage People to walk to this Landmark pages to to learn more above the Stories from the People, ”said the author. “B.then, Per the most Part, the People In the civil right Move was essentially Volunteers who had the feeling that they couldn’t take it anymore. “
He said any survey of the civil rights movement must combine strong visual imagery of the human cost of transformation found at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the motel where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in town to support black sanitation workers’ demands for fair wages.
“You turn around unexpectedly and look into the hotel room in which Martin Luther King lived. And where he was shot, right outside that door. It’s emotional, ”said Sentell.
Brown versus Education Committee
He said the civil rights trail included Farmville, Virginia, where three-quarters of the plaintiffs in the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka case were. The Virginia chapter of this legal effort was ignited when Barbara Johns, 16, led students on strike at her all-black high school in 1951. There was no library, science laboratory, gym, cafeteria, or indoor toilet in their school.
The US Supreme Court eventually consolidated a number of school segregation cases into Brown vs. Board of Education. In 1954 the Supreme Court overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson Standard “Separate But Equal” from 1896 with a unanimous opinion invalidating racial segregation in public schools.
An educational exhibit outside the Brown v. National Historic Site. Board of Education in Topeka and a destination on the US Civil Rights Trail. (Submitted by Patricia E. Weems Gaston)
Sentell first visited the Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, fulfilling a 50-year wish to visit the eponymous city of the school separation.
“We would have on small amount on small amount talk and on Book sign, ”said Sentell. “Iit is powerful. Because, I mean, the is floor Zero.”
He said the goal was to get the Brown v. Board of Education within two years as a World Heritage Site, making it the first designated elementary school in the United States.
A signatory to this unanimous opinion on desegregation in school, Judge Hugo Black, had attended the same church in Alabama in his youth that Sentell had done. He hit justice in Washington, DC shortly before his death
Back on the way, New Orleans honors Ruby Bridges, who was the first black student in town at age 6 to attend a formerly all-white elementary school event painted by Norman Rockwell in 1960. She was sitting alone with a teacher in a classroom boycotted by white students.
Washington, DC, is a major stop on the civil rights journey, Sentell said, because it is home to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which contains 36,000 artifacts of the African American experience. The district is also home to the US Supreme Court, which made landmark civil rights decisions, and the Lincoln Memorial, where King gave the 1963 I Have A Dream speech.
The route leads through Sumner, Mississippi, where 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and murdered by white racists in 1955. The all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and his brother JW Milam of the crime. The Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center is located near Sumner.
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was the site of a 1963 bomb attack on the Ku Klux Klan that killed four young black girls.
Evers, Parks and König
In Little Rock, Arkansas, the Central High School National Historic Site commemorates nine black students who opposed Governor Orval Faubus by asking for admission in 1957. President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched federal soldiers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and federal National Guard forces to keep these children safe.
The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is located in Jackson along with the home of Medgar Evers, the state’s first NAACP Secretary of State. He was responsible for voter registration and investigations into racially motivated killings. This work led to his assassination in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith who dropped a .30-06 rifle with his fingerprints on it at the scene. Beckwith was acquitted twice by all-white juries, but 30 years later convicted of murder and died in prison.
A detail from Michael Young’s mural Brown v. Board of Education in the Kansas Capitol, depicting the nation’s struggle with “separate but equal” public schools. (CJ Janovy / Kansas reflector)
The International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, commemorates four black college students who refused to leave a Woolworth lunch counter after telling them they would not be served. It helped spark the nonviolent sit-in movement. Similar sit-in strikes in Nashville, Tennessee, resulted in Mayor making Nashville the first city in the south to desegregate food.
The trail also leads to Atlanta with the King Center, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Contributions from Montgomery, Alabama include the Rosa Parks Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Freedom Ride Museum, and the Civil Rights Memorial.
Sentell said he heard King during the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery. This march was delayed when Alabama state soldiers and local MPs beat more than 500 suffrage activists on Bloody Sunday. The attack stopped black protesters on Selmas Edmund Pettus Bridge trying to reach the Capitol.
“I heard Martin Luther king to speak outdoors from Montgomery, ”said Sentell. “IT was exciting on Few from years in front, if president Obama came on the 50 anniversary from the date from Bloody Sunday. There was 45,000 People there. IT was amazing.”
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