By Michael Sznajderman
Alabama News Center
Lee Sentell was in college when he heard the words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in person. It was during the Selma to Montgomery suffrage march in 1965, the night before King made his famous “How Long? Not Long “speech on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.
King spoke to rain-soaked protesters camped on the outskirts of Montgomery in the City of St. Jude, a Catholic educational, health and spiritual complex dedicated to the black community.
A student at Auburn University in 1965 and a contributor to the campus newspaper The Auburn Plainsman, Sentell had come to Montgomery, not so much for the march as for the night of entertainment that was scheduled for that night outside of St. Jude. Organized by popular recording artist, actor and activist Harry Belafonte, the Stars for Freedom Rally featured an impressive array of artists and celebrities including Sammy Davis Jr., Odetta, Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez, Tony Bennett, Nina Simone, Leonard Bernstein and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Sentell was particularly interested in Simone and whether she would perform her controversial civil rights ballad Mississippi Goddam, a song about the murder of four black girls in Birmingham in 1963 during a Sunday morning bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church by the Ku Klux Klan was inspired.
That night and King’s inspiring words to the weary marchers stayed with Sentell. Decades later, as Alabama’s state tourism director, this inspired him to compile a state list of African American cultural heritage sites and create the Alabama Civil Rights Trail, which includes more than 40 places that played a role in the fight for black equality.
Tragedy and triumph
In 2017, Sentell and the Alabama Tourism Bureau worked with other state travel agents in the South on an even bigger idea: to develop the US Civil Rights Trail, which highlights more than 100 locations in 15 states, mainly in the South and the Midwest. The path traces the decades-long journey – starting in the middle of the 20th century.
Via the US Civil Rights Trail, visitors can explore the sites of individual states – physically or virtually. Or, they can travel history chronologically: from the segregated school in Topeka, Kansas, which sparked the 1954 US Supreme Court ruling rejecting “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites; to Montgomery, where in 1955 the seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man; to Memphis, where King was hit by an assassin’s bullet in 1968 while standing on a motel balcony.
Now there is another option for those looking to explore the US Civil Rights Trail: a full-color companion book that guides readers along the 30-year timeline that marks key moments in the modern civil rights movement. Sentell is the author of the book, with major editing services going to Georgia State University (GSU) Professor Glenn Eskew, a respected civil rights historian and author of the critically acclaimed But For Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle.
“You can’t tell the story of the South without talking about the Civil War, the Confederation and the civil rights movement,” Sentell said in a recent interview with the Alabama NewsCenter.
“I like the fact that people in other states are reading this – to see what happened in Alabama.”
In fact, one look at the map of the book, which lists major civil rights sites across the country, shows how important the events in Alabama were to the movement’s major legislative and legal victories. These victories include: the military’s decision in 1941 to allow Tuskegee University to train black pilots for World War II; the 1956 US Supreme Court ruling banning segregated buses, triggered by the Montgomery bus boycott; the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that followed Birmingham’s Children’s Crusade and the horrific bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church; and the 1965 Suffrage Bill passed, following the Bloody Sunday attack on suffrage activists in Selma and the subsequent march from Selma to Montgomery.
The book’s cover photo actually points to Selma: it’s an idyllic sunset portrait of the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, a stark contrast to an image inside showing the vicious blows civil rights activists suffered while crossing almost the same bridge 60 years ago. One of the victims was 25-year-old Alabama-born civil rights activist John Lewis, later a Georgia congressman. Photo shows Lewis being knocked to the ground by a state trooper. On the last page of the book is another photo of Lewis with Sentell and other dignitaries unveiling a historic plaque in honor of the Congressman. The plaque is located outside the Troy Public Library, where Lewis, who died in 2020 as a young boy, was denied a library card.
The creative use of photography is one of the book’s most compelling features. By combining historical and contemporary snapshots of civil rights institutions – in some cases expertly in fresh images from then and now – the book offers an impressive and impressive tableau of some of the most historic moments in the civil rights struggle.
Sentell’s crisp writing style – he worked as a journalist as a young man – doesn’t just tell the stories behind each site; it also provides historical context for each location or event and outlines the larger role each has played in the progressive journey towards equality.
The US Civil Rights Trail and its companion book owe their creation to others in Alabama. The design of the book and the website of the US Civil Rights Trail were created by the Birmingham-based agency Luckie & Co. The book was published by the Alabama Media Group, the organization behind al.com, The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, Press. published -Register in mobile and other platforms.
Bigger project
Meanwhile, another even larger project has links to Alabama and the US Civil Rights Trail. During his second term in office, President Barack Obama directed the National Park Service to look for ways for the United States to add diversity to the list of UNESCO-approved World Heritage Sites. At the request of Alabama, a HSE team led by Eskew identified 60 civil rights monuments as potential UNESCO candidates. Sentell said a formal proposal to UNESCO to make the sites a “standard” World Heritage site is expected to be submitted to officials in Paris within two years.
Sentell said Alabamans should be proud of the role the people and places of the state have played in promoting human rights, noting that global travel organizations like Trafalgar and Smithsonian Journeys book tours to civil rights websites in Alabama. Parade magazine featured Alabama sites on the US Civil Rights Trail as one of 10 US travel destinations this summer in its July 16 issue.
The interest underscores how Alabama’s part of civil rights history is being recognized and that that history must continue to be conveyed to new generations.
“It’s important to be reminded of the incredible courage and bravery it took,” Sentell said, from the adults who refused to ride on separate buses in Montgomery to the beaten activists in Selma to the Teenagers with snap dogs and high powered fire hoses in Birmingham. And to honor those who were killed fighting for civil rights.
“People are literally putting their livelihoods and lives at risk,” said Sentell.
Signings for the new US Civil Rights Trail book are scheduled with Sentell on August 19 at Books A Million stores in Montgomery and August 20 in Trussville.
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