Take a civil rights tour -- come to Alabama
Phillip Rawls, an AP writer I have known for years, has an article on civil rights tourist destinations in Alabama. The Tri-City Herald in Washington State has just published the article, which begins:
In Montgomery, Jefferson Davis Avenue crosses Rosa Parks Avenue, creating an appropriate intersection for a place that used to rely on Civil War tourism but that now draws visitors to a growing number of civil rights attractions.Events that made Alabama a civil rights battleground in the 1950s and '60s -- Ku Klux Klan bombings, beatings of Freedom Riders and the jailing of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- are now being remembered in state-of-the-art museums and historic preservation projects.
"Alabama stands at the epicenter of America's second revolution," says Jim Carrier, author of "A Traveler's Guide to the Civil Rights Movement."
"No other state has the quality or quantity of destinations of what was a battlefield in the '60s," Sentell said.
I am happy to see Phil's article was published so far away. I hope it is picked up by more papers.
And to the people of the Mid-Columbia region of Washington, and everybody else, "Y'all come."