A new guide leads travelers through U.S. civil rights history
By Kate Silver,
Butch Dill Associated Press
Deborah Douglas spent nearly a year living in parallel worlds. During the week, she taught journalism classes at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. When she wasn’t teaching, she hopped in a plane or rental car to research eight states and D.C. while writing a guidebook to the civil rights movement.
Recently released, “Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places and Events that Made the Movement” tells the story of Black America’s quest for equality and justice. “It’s a travel book, but this is also a history book and a civics primer,” Douglas says. “And it’s a road map to activism, if you want it to be.”
Douglas, whose journalism and teaching has long focused on equity and justice issues, knew her book couldn’t possibly cover all of the highlights of the ever-growing U.S. Civil Rights Trail — which was established in 2018 by a number of state tourism boards, and goes as far east as Wilmington, Del., and as far west as Topeka, Kan. — so she set out to tell the story of the movement through some of its catalytic moments. She includes places like the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, S.C.; the Martin Luther King Jr. Birth Home in Atlanta; the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Ala.; Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss.; Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock; the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis; and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. The book is also packed with interviews with activists and icons, along with recommendations on where to visit for food, shopping and entertainment, with an emphasis on Black-owned businesses.
Douglas explains that the guide isn’t meant to be followed in a single trip. Rather, she hopes people explore it in bits and pieces, taking a weekend trip here or adding a detour there, as a way of folding these important pieces of history into their travel routines. “In my experience, Black narratives and Black spaces are not automatically curated for cultural tourism or for cultural exploration,” she says. “I realized that there is just so much history outside of our front doors.”
[For Black tour guides in Savannah, the historical is personal]
The book is an invitation to explore that history, and to embrace our role in shaping it for the better every day. Douglas recently discussed the book with The Washington Post. (The interview has been edited for clarity and length.)
Q: What were some of the most memorable experiences in researching the book?
A: When I was in Birmingham, [Ala.,] I was walking around Kelly Ingram Park, where there are a lot of monuments and plaques that really contextualize what was happening in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, which included the Children’s Crusade. Those iconic images from the civil rights movement of water hoses being unleashed on people, and the barking dogs and police beating people with batons — that was the Children’s Crusade, and the police were attacking children. So I’m walking around the park and I see a group of older White people, and they’re being led by an older Black gentleman. He starts singing all of a sudden, and he leads them in this rousing spiritual song, “I’m gonna sing when the spirit says sing.” . . . It made me feel like home.
Moon Travel
“Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events that Made the Movement” was published in January.
I later found out that he’s Bishop Calvin Woods of Shiloh Baptist Church. I reached out to him, and he told me the story of the 1956 founding of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. The NAACP had been outlawed in Alabama, so Black people from all over town had a secret meeting to talk about what they needed to do to replace the NAACP and advocate for civil rights. So I’m asking Reverend Woods, “Who was at the meeting? Were there women?” And he’s like, “Hold on, young lady. Just back up. Nobody need you to know who was where when how what. You stop it!” I thought that was amazing. It was 2020 when I was having this conversation with him. And back then it was dangerous for them to gather together and do what they were about to do. Word was bond then, and word is bond now. He’s still protecting them till the end of time.
Another time I was on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham. I hired a guide that day, Barry McNealy, and we bumped into Jeff Drew, the son of civil rights activists John and Deenie Drew. He still lives in the family house that Dr. Martin Luther King stayed in during the Birmingham Campaign. The home’s interior was designed to protect it from bombs, and a barricade in front was erected by his father to keep white supremacists from bombing the family.
Q: Wow. It sounds like the experiences that stick out are the people you met and the stories they shared along the way. It’s about human connection.
A: Exactly. I have so many aunties, uncles, friends and cousins now.
[A powerful memorial in Montgomery remembers the victims of lynching]
Q: What were some of the best things you ate?
A: Oh, my goodness. Okay, the wings at Busy Bee Cafe in Atlanta. Dr. King ate there. They were just so golden and crispy. And then at Lassis Inn in Little Rock. It was sort of a strategy place where Daisy Bates and people who worked on the school integration crisis in Little Rock would eat. They have something called buffalo ribs. It’s buffalo fish, which I grew up cooking on Friday nights with my grandmother outside of Memphis. They cut it in such a way that the fish looks like rib! It’s delicious. And then you’ve got to go to Memphis to Payne’s Bar-B-Q and get yourself a barbecue bologna sandwich. It’s transgressive. I ain’t got no business eating a bologna sandwich, but here we are.
Ven Sherrod
Author Deborah Douglas says the guide isn’t meant to be followed in a single trip. Rather, she hopes people explore it in bits and pieces, taking a weekend trip here or adding a detour there, as a way of folding these important pieces of history into their travel routines.
Q: You covered shops as well. Did you bring home any souvenirs?
A: I didn’t buy a lot of stuff. But I can tell you I really enjoyed the gift shop at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. It has really great books, including a children’s book called “Preaching to the Chickens,” which is John Lewis’s story, and it was written by my friend, Jabari Asim. At that museum, I was also really delighted in seeing a quilt by master quilter Hystercine Rankin, whom I met back in the ’90s. In the gift shop there were these little quilt pieces that are refrigerator magnets that were just so small and precious, and they reminded me of Ms. Rankin and my own grandmother, Louise Purham, also a quilter. And then in Memphis, there’s a Black-owned gift shop called Cheryl Pesce The Lifestyle Store, located in the reimagined Crosstown Concourse. The shop has really beautiful jewelry, home goods, books and they have Mo’s Bows for sale. Moziah “Mo” Bridges was a little Black boy in Memphis who started making bow ties as a child. He’s all grown up now, but Mo’s Bows is still going strong.
Q: In the back of your book is a timeline that includes events that have happened since the civil rights movement, including the protests of 2020. As we start traveling again, what do you hope people take away from this book?
A: This is not a passive experience, where you’re looking into the past. That’s the trick of those black-and-white images of the civil rights movement. It seems like it’s frozen in time. But this is very much living history. And so now you have the opportunity to decide: Who do you want to be? Yes, we have more work to do. We are still engaging with the themes from this movement. It never really ended. But that’s a call to action, right? It helps you decide which side of history you want to be on.
Silver is a writer based in Chicago. Find her on Twitter: @K8Silver.
More from Travel:
As plantations talk more honestly about slavery, some visitors are pushing back
The U.S. has 35,000 museums. Why is only one about slavery?
