In Alabama, I find a historic trail of tragedy and triumph — and the human side of the fight for civil rights

More than 40 sites are listed on the Alabama Civil Rights Trail, which has gained significant attention mainly within the past decade.

As seen in Toronto Star

Civil rights activist JoAnne Bland leads me across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a steel through-arch bridge spanning the Alabama River in Selma, Ala., where back in 1965 she marched in protest for her national voting rights. Guided by Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, she and 600 others were beaten and bloodied by white segregationists while attempting to march onward to Montgomery.

It took three attempts over five days for that march to make it safely across the bridge. The brutal events that transpired, on what is known as “Bloody Sunday,” ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.

Now, as I stand at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, the site where Lewis corralled protesters before crossing the bridge, Bland asks me to pick up a rock from the ground and lift it to the sky. “This is history,” she explains. “You are holding a piece of our history in your hand. Let this always be a reminder to fight for justice where there is none.” It’s then that I see the true enormity of such a small stone.

Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge is just one of more than 40 sites listed on the Alabama Civil Rights Trail, which maps landmarks across the state where pivotal moments — both tragic and triumphant — in America’s civil rights movement took place, in the 1950s and ’60s.

As a biracial woman, I had complicated emotions about my journey to understand the Deep South. I knew visiting this trail would take me through years of Black trauma, highlighting horrors of the past, and be a reminder of my place as “less than.”

Still, I hoped the experience would also celebrate Black joy and the triumphs of civil rights leaders, and leave me with the knowledge that progress may be hard-fought, but it’s possible.

In the 1980s, Alabama created the Black Heritage Guide, a first-of-its-kind booklet that listed primarily Black churches across the state, though it struggled with how to marry history and tourism. The Alabama Civil Rights Trail was established in 2003, but it’s gained significant attention mainly within the past decade. In 2018, Alabama joined 15 other states to create what is now the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.

The state is also funding research to identify more landmarks recognizing the Black community’s contribution to civil rights. As home to some of the most intense Jim Crow laws and campaigns for equality in U.S. history, Alabama identified about a dozen significant sites in 2017 alone.

The first stop on my journey is Birmingham, Ala., a city nicknamed “Bombingham” for the over 50 racist bombings here between 1947 and 1965. Most of these targeted principal civil rights leaders such as Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, whose family home and church were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan numerous times.

The city’s most concentrated bombing site was nicknamed Dynamite Hill. In this residential area, Center Street was the dividing line, separating the white and Black sides of town. Until the 1960s, it was illegal for Black persons to live on the white side, a rule officially punishable by the court, but commonly enforced through violence and terrorism.

Today, this physical representation of segregation divides what looks like a calm, leafy suburban street. But standing here, I can sense a tension still lingering in the air. Even the solid brick houses seem poised at the ready, anticipating conflict. It’s a feeling that’s hard to shake, and I’m reminded that this horrifying past was only a generation ago.

But the place I find most haunting in Birmingham is the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four Black schoolgirls were murdered by a bomb in 1963. The basement is now a memorial to not only the girls, but also to the still-active church’s status as perpetual witness to Birmingham’s painful history.

A timeline, beginning with the church’s establishment in 1873, winds through the basement. Glass cases proudly display original landownership documents, pictures of past Black constituents, and images of animated civil rights leaders on the pulpit.

Midway through the timeline, I stop, a lump catching in my throat. The black-and-white portraits of the four little girls — Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins — gaze down at me from the wall. Directly beside them hangs the old clock, stopped at 10:22, the exact time the bomb detonated, and their lives were stolen.

Acts of race-based terrorism have always galvanized the Black community to action, and nowhere is there a greater unspoken camaraderie than in a Black church. Traditionally places of healing and hope, churches became meeting spaces for activists throughout the civil rights era.

In Montgomery, Ala., I find Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where King was a pastor from 1954 to 1960. The red-bricked Gothic Revival building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974, due to its significance in the civil rights movement.

When I arrive, its oversized, white wooden doors invite me inside, as though the church has been expecting me. Despite only a few other people in the long wooden pews, this small, bright sanctuary feels full, brimming with warmth and intensity.

A churchgoer named Wanda takes my hand, and with a squeeze, breaks into a deep chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” This song was sung by the enslaved for hundreds of years and in this church especially, as congregations prayed for freedom of body, mind and spirit. As Wanda sings, sunlight fractures through the stained glass across our faces, and I feel our strength in sisterhood, brought together by the shade of our skin.

Outside the church, I see tributes to the civil rights movement all over the city core. Statues of Rosa Parks stand on the corner where she was arrested, and on a bench outside Troy University, which also has a museum dedicated to the civil rights icon. A water fountain commemorates a square where slaves were once sold, and the crosswalk right by Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church is marked with footprints, a nod to where protesters once marched to the Alabama State Capitol.

Although I understand the significance of these emblems, I toggle between seeing them as a celebration of civil rights justice, and a reminder of the segregation that seems determined to endure.

The inequalities of the past aren’t all in the past, but I leave Alabama with a greater clarity. With every hug, every hymn and every anecdote shared with me on this trip, I saw the human side of this history. The legacy of the fight for civil rights is a mosaic of individual stories, tales of courage and love. Understanding them is more important than ever as we continue the fight toward a more just future.

Writer Natalie Preddie travelled as a guest of the Alabama Tourism Department, which did not review or approve this article.