A Civil Rights Trail Guide to the South

The Civil Rights Trail is an officially designated collection of landmarks across the US south, which stretches from South Carolina, a foundational place to ground the African American experience, westward to Kansas, home of the case that legally started it all: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Along the way, you'll find stops in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Here are nine spots along the trail where you can get a clearer understanding of some of the movement’s most important moments by exploring monuments, markers, protest sites, historic homes, and institutions, along with museums that capture the story of the everyday people who put their lives on the line to make the kind of change that makes America truly great.

Memphis offers many points of entry into the local and national Civil Rights Movement, and both are comprehensively showcased at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. There, see room 306, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony. In addition to lifesize statues of striking sanitation workers—whose plight drew King to Memphis—the museum features films, oral histories, and interactive media illustrating many other important moments in the city’s Civil Rights Movement, such as the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the student sit-ins of the 1960s, the Freedom Rides, and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Permanent and temporary exhibitions, programs, and digital platforms also explore contemporary global civil and human rights issues with the aim of provoking thoughtful debate and incentivizing positive social change.

Did you know?: There’s a playbook used historically by Black people to liberate themselves. Make sure to stop by the wall at the museum entrance that illuminates the strategies: escape, revolt, petition and protest, community building, achievement and success, and defiance.

In 1957, nine Black students in Little Rock tested the veracity of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools by integrating Central High School. A lot of Black community organizing went into making this happen. At the same time, a lot of organizing in Little Rock’s white community went into keeping these students out.

Get the play-by-play of these events at the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, which features historical narratives, photos, and videos. For a really in-depth experience, you can also sign up for an NPS park ranger tour that includes Central High, a breathtaking Gothic Revival structure that is still a working high school.

Insider tip: When leaving the visitors’ center, walk across the street to the 1920s-era Magnolia Mobil Gas Station that journalists made into their headquarters during the integration crisis.

Boxing great Muhammad Ali embodied the spirit and promise of the Civil Rights Movement by courageously exercising his agency in his personal life and career: He changed his birth name to align with his faith, became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and has poured his energy into activism in a variety of ways. These decisions and accomplishments are chronicled at the Muhammad Ali Center, a cultural space and museum in Louisville where you can see films of his greatest fights and memorabilia including his boxing gloves, title belts, tickets, belts, and his contract with the Louisville Sponsoring Group.

For a deeper understanding of Ali’s character, and to learn more about how his values drove him to become a leader and an inspiration during the Civil Rights era and beyond, make sure to look over the “Six Core Principles” to learn about his core beliefs.

If you want to literally walk in the footsteps of courageous civil rights activists, visit the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which extends over the Alabama River from US 80 (coming from Montgomery) into Selma. During the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965, peaceful voting rights demonstrators were beaten here by law enforcement in an effort to thwart a multiday trek to demand voting rights at the capitol in Montgomery, in which even children, known as the “foot soldiers” of the movement, participated.

Though the bridge is a working roadway, you can pull over to the side of the road to walk across it, then visit Civil Rights Memorial Park. Monuments to voting rights standard bearers such as Amelia Boynton Robinson can also be found here. While you’re in Selma, you should also stop by the Selma Interpretive Center (located across and kitty-corner to the bridge) to learn about other nearby historical sites.

The BirminghamCivil Rights District offers a tight collection of sites that preserve and amplify the literal places and spaces where activists made their demands. None is more important, however, than the 16th Street Baptist Church, where, in 1963, four girls—Addie Mae Collins, 14; Carol Denise McNair, 11; Cynthia Wesley, 14; and Carole Rosamond Robertson, 14—were murdered by a bomb planted by the Ku Klux Klan. (Addie Mae’s sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph, the “Fifth Girl” lived but lost an eye). That same date, two Black boys, Johnny Robinson, 16, and Virgil Ware, 13, died in violent circumstances.

You can book a tour of the church with a guide who will contextualize the importance of this tragedy and the role of the Black church in freedom movements. Visit the sanctuary and see a marker where the bomb went off. Look up! There’s the Black Christ in stained glass by John Petts, a gift from the people of Wales. You’ll leave with a visceral comprehension of what these families and wider community experienced in the face of the loss of these precious girls.

Insider tip: Be sure to book a tour on the church’s website in advance by about a week. (According to church officials, some groups even book a year in advance.)

Situated kitty-corner from the 16th Street Baptist Church is another important site: Kelly Ingram Park, a 4-acre (1.6-hectare) park that served as a staging area for the 1963 Birmingham Campaign and its Children’s Crusade. The campaign included a variety of nonviolent, direct-action methods including lunch counter sit-ins, marches, and boycotts and also led to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s imprisonment, when he penned his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Statues and monuments around the park commemorate moments during this period. They include a scene of a teen boy being attacked by a police dog; a water cannon that evokes segregationist Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor (who used all his might to attack and disperse protesters, many of them children); and the Four Spirits, a memorial that honors the four girls lost in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

Insider tip: If you can, visit this park with a local tour guide (or take an audio tour); hearing the stories while there really brings the history to life.

Cap off your visit to Birmingham by walking across the street to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Here, you can touch the bars of King’s jail cell and learn in-depth about efforts of workaday Black residents to educate, organize, and demand full rights as American citizens—and find out why Birmingham was an ideal location for organizing against and confronting Jim Crow practices, policies, and laws. Outside, the site also features a statue of local civil rights legend the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who suffered many personal attacks, including the bombing of his home Christmas Day, 1956.

Housed in a modernist structure called Two Mississippi Museums, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson brings the struggle for civil rights to life through sound, film, and touchable displays. One exhibit incorporates voices from Mississippi's past, allowing you to experience the tension and attitudes prevalent during the Jim Crow South.

See how Black Americans—demoralized yet determined after losing voting rights after Reconstruction—built institutions and organized to claw back those rights and gain more. Films about this mid-20th century period, interactive exhibits, and relics tell the stories of the Mississippi residents, ranging from World War II veterans to student activists, who demanded the right to vote, learn, live, and breathe freely in the face of horrific white supremacist violence.

Insider tip: Don’t leave with an empty stomach; the food in this state is just too delicious to miss. Visit Nissan Cafe, by chef Nick Wallace (located within the museum complex) and try the Mississippi Gumbo.

While in Jackson, tour the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home, a National Monument honoring NAACP field organizer Medgar Evers. The single-story, rambler-style home has been left much as it was during Evers’ life and offers intimate scenes of family life including a living room with a piano, framed photos, and a display of Life magazines; a homey kitchen; and a furnished children’s room.

While you contemplate the activists’ life, you’ll also notice more chilling details that speak to the reality of an activist family living under racial terror in the ’60s, including the fact that the children’s mattresses are set low to avoid any whirring bullets from outside. When you arrive, you’ll also enter the Evers family home through a door off of the same driveway where Medgar was gunned down by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith Jr.

Insider tip: If you’re touring with a group of 10 or more people, you'll want to call and reserve a spot a week or two ahead of time.