Montgomery, Alabama is the city where 1955 the successful execution of the Montgomery Bus Boycott initiated the Direct Action phase of the Modern American Civil Rights Movement. Conversely, a century earlier, the city is where the Confederate States of America was established, with the goal of protecting the right to enslave.
As the state’s capital city, and with a history of being one of the nation’s foremost slave-trading centers, Montgomery has provided a backdrop for several of the nation’s most transformative events. The African-American historic sites in Montgomery hold an unparalleled place in the nation’s civil rights history, with locations relevant to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, the student protest movement, and the Selma to Montgomery March.
Alabama State University has many ties to the civil rights movement. ASU students, faculty, staff, and alumni played important roles in nearly every major civil rights episode. For more information on ASU’s campus see [insert tour links].
Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. The SPLC also operates the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, an interpretive center which honors the martyrs of the movement and inspires ongoing social justice and racial equity.
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is a nonprofit organization founded by Bryan Stevenson in 1989. Stevenson is a legal advocate for the rights of Blacks unfairly charged and sentenced by the courts. More recently, Stevenson has become an ardent supporter of efforts to preserve African-American history. Under the auspices of the EJI, Stevenson oversaw the construction of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
The City of St Jude is a Catholic social services center organized in the 1930s for the religious and educational welfare of Black Montgomerians. On March 24, 1965, the City of St. Jude hosted the Stars for Freedom Rally, a concert organized by Harry Belafonte as part of the Selma to Montgomery March. Performing in the rain, stars such as Sammy Davis Jr., Mahalia Jackson, and Leonard Bernstein, played to 25,000 marchers.
The Dexter King Memorial Baptist Church was founded in 1877 on the site of a slave trader’s pen. Martin Luther King Jr was pastor of Dexter from 1954 to 1960.
Martin Luther King Jr lived in the Dexter parsonage with his wife, Coretta Scott King and family from 1954 to 1960 when he pastored at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. This house was bombed in protest against King’s leadership in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in January 1956.
Located in Montgomery’s former Greyhound bus station, the Freedom Rides Museum tells the history of the 1961 Freedom Rides that worked to end racial segregation on public transportation.
In March 1960, several hundred ASU students demonstrated at this site against the unfair expulsion of fellow students by the State Board of Education who had attempted to desegregate the courthouse’s segregated snack bar. This protest was one of several acts of student activism during this period.
The Ben Moore Hotel, the only African-American facility of its kind in Montgomery, opened in 1945. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the hotel served as a meeting place for discussions on topics related to the black community. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Montgomery Civil Rights leaders patronize the Malden Brothers Barber Shop on the first floor of the hotel.
Operated by Troy University, the Rosa Parks Museum tells the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Rosa Parks role in this significant event as a memorial to the civil rights icon. The museum includes artifacts relevant to the boycott, including the original fingerprint card from Rosa Parks arrest and a 1950s-era Montgomery city bus.
The Alabama State Capitol, the highest seat of government in the state, was the site of marches and protests during the civil rights movement. It is best remembered as the concluding site of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights march, when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech to a crowd of 25,000 people.
The third interpretive site of the National Parks Service Selma-to-Montgomery Trail, the Montgomery Interpretive Center includes exhibits of the Montgomery phase of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights crusade. The MIC is located on the campus of Alabama State University and is part of the campus’ Cultural District.
Rufus Lewis was an early voting rights activist in Montgomery. In the 1940s, Lewis held classes for African Americans to prepare them for the literacy test required at the time to register to vote. Lewis founded the Citizens Club in 1952, a social club aimed at assisting individuals with voter registration. Lewis was also involved in the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Mt. Zion is a historic church dating back to 1899. The Montgomery Improvement Association, which organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was formed in this church in 1955.
On December 5, 1955 the day the Montgomery Bus Boycott originated, a crowd of 5,000 people attended the first mass meeting of the bus protest. Following a speech by Martin Luther King Jr, the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, attendees at the meeting voted to continue the protest against bus segregation.
Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon, referred to as the “Father of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” was a civil rights activist and organizer. Alongside Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women’s Political Council, Nixon helped plan a boycott against segregated seating on Montgomery’s public transportation system. The bus protest came in the wake of the arrest of Rosa Park, longtime Montgomery activist on December 1, 1955, to surrender her bus seat to a white male on a segregated Montgomery bus.
The parsonage was home to Robert Graetz, the white pastor of the all-Black Trinity Lutheran Church, his wife Jeanne and family from 1955 to 1957. The Graetzes openly supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Graetzes’ support of the struggle segregated buses led to their home being bombed by Ku Klux Klan on two occasions.
Johnnie Carr was the fourth president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization which oversaw the protest against segregated bus seating. Mrs. Carr and her husband, Arlam, became the lead plaintiffs in the 1965 case, Carr v. Montgomery Board of Education, which led to the desegregation of Montgomery public schools.
Court Square Fountain was built in 1885 in the area that had been the center of Montgomery’s slave trade prior to the Civil War. In June of 2020, a “Black Lives Matter” mural was painted around the fountain. Throughout the summer of 2020, the nation saw an uptake in public activism in response to the death of George Floyd and others at the hands of the police. The mural was completed on Juneteenth.
From 1951 to 1961, the First Baptist Church was pastored by Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, a 1950 ASU alumnus. Abernathy was a key official in the Montgomery Improvement Association and in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The church was the site of meetings during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and during the Freedom Rides. In 1957, First Baptist was bombed along with several other churches and parsonages in the city, as an act of violence and intimidation by the KKK.
The Montgomery City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, purchased this large two story structure as a multipurpose civic facility in 1943. The house was originally constructed in 1853 by U.S. Attorney Jefferson Franklin Jackson.
Over the course of five decades the Montgomery City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs operated a range of activities out of this structure. The house provided the African American community in Montgomery with space for the girl scouts, a teen social center, adult social and civic center, and the city’s first library open to African-Americans. The facility also housed the Women’s Political Council, the ‘Stork’s nest’ for mothers, voter registration activities, counseling programs, youth leadership programs, Head Start kindergarten, as well as family reunions, receptions and weddings.
