Stop 1: Montgomery Interpretive Center
The National Park Service operates the Montgomery Interpretive Center along with centers in Dallas and Lowndes Counties, along the Selma to Montgomery Historic Trail. In 1965, thousands of marchers led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., walked the fifty-four-mile trail from Selma to Montgomery as a way to draw attention to the need for federal voting rights legislation. Their efforts helped to usher in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Stop 2: Nat King Cole House
This one-story house was originally constructed in 1912. The house is the birthplace of celebrated entertainer Nat King Cole. The cottage style house was once located on St. John Street in the Montgomery, Alabama community of Bel-Aire. The house was moved several blocks north to make way for construction of the football stadium. The house was purchased during the 1910s by a working-class preacher at Beulah Baptist Church, Edward Coles, and his wife Perlina Adams. Perlina gave birth to Nathaniel Adams Coles on March 17, 1919. Several years later when Nathaniel was four years old, the Coles family, including Nat and his two siblings, Eddie M. and Edward B., moved to Chicago, Illinois where Nat King Cole would become a celebrated entertainer. ASU purchased the house from Amos Harris, the founder of the Nat King Cole Society.
Ralph David Abernathy House
This single floor cottage style house is located at 1327 Harris Way and was originally constructed in 1930, where it served as the parsonage home for the First Baptist church. Rev. Ralph David Abernathy occupied the home from 1952 to 1961, while he pastored the First Baptist Church. At this house Rev. Abernathy hosted planning meetings for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The home was then bombed on January 10, 1957, after Montgomery busses were successfully desegregated. At the house Abernathy discussed organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during 1956, and he helped ASU students plan a sit-in that took place at the Montgomery County Courthouse on February 25, 1960. After Freedom Riders were assaulted by a mob at the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Montgomery, the parsonage was the location for a May 1961 press conference where Rev. Abernathy, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis announced the continuation of the Freedom Rides. Rev. Abernathy lived in this parsonage house with his wife Juanita Oddessa and four of their eventually five children.
Stop 4: Friendship Manor
In 1963, under the Levi Watkins administration, the house was called “Friendship Manor.” The President’s Residence was originally built in the Craftsman fashion with a wraparound pergola/porch and exposed timber work. In 1919, the Alabama State Legislature appropriated $2,000 towards the project. These funds along with money raised by alumni and friends allowed construction on the two-story brick veneer building to be completed in 1922. The building is situated on a lot previously used as a County “Poor House” for the indigent. The building was located on Thurman Street and was occupied by three presidents, George Washington Trenholm, Harper Councill Trenholm, and Levi Watkins
Stop 5: Civil Rights Memorial Gardens
The first phase of the Civil Rights Memorial Gardens, situated on the Southeastern corner of the Levi Watkins Learning Center, was laid out as part of the 2011 renovations to the ASU Library and Learning Resource Center.
