A 6-City Black History & Resistance Road Trip
In light of Juneteenth, a now federally mandated holiday celebrating the legal emancipation of Blacks from slavery (not the liberation of Blacks from the ongoing oppressive systems designed to profile, criminalize, incarcerate and murder in preservation of white supremacy), I wanted to share some of my reflections on a recent road trip Ammar and I embarked upon in exploring Black history and resistance in the Southern U.S.
This was our first time travelling to any of these cities and needless to say, the learning has only begun. A full itinerary of our travels is at the bottom.
Memphis, TN
-Lorraine Motel (where MLK was shot)
-Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum
-I Am a Man Plaza (honoring the legacy of the 1968 sanitation workers who went on strike)
-Rock ’n’ Soul Museum
-Beale St
-A Walmart in Arkansas
Lorraine Motel — The Sanitization of MLK’s Life
Being at the site where MLK was shot was powerful, especially because of how often we see the famous photos of MLK’s colleagues on the balcony alongside his fallen body, pointing in the direction of where the bullet came. The significance of MLK being in Memphis speaks to what he was attempting to do towards the end of his life. As part of his Poor People’s Campaign, MLK expanded his fight for civil rights for Black folks by pushing for economic justice and equality. MLK arrived in Memphis specifically to support Black striking sanitation workers who were being denied livable wages, overtime and safe working conditions.
The sad reality is that throughout the course of our trip, all of the major civil rights institutes and museums we visited erased much of this more “radical” and less palatable MLK — the MLK that believed in a radical redistribution of wealth; the MLK that concluded that civil rights acts were easy for the government to dole out because simply guaranteeing someone their right to vote did not require any financial sacrifice or restructuring of power; the MLK that took the extremely unpopular stance early on of opposing the Vietnam War and identified the three evils of American society being the evils of racism, capitalism and militarism.
This sanitization of MLK’s legacy — one that would allow the power brokers of this country to more easily incorporate his work into a false national narrative that the struggle of the 1960s yielded ultimate equality for all — raised a fundamental question that came up again and again throughout our trip: whose history are we learning?
Lorraine Motel — Protecting the Past vs. Investing in the Present
Ironically enough, just outside of the Lorraine Motel was Jacqueline Smith who was seated in the rain with a sign that read “Put an end to gentrification in Memphis today.” In asking more about her decades-long campaign and her desire to relocate the museum connected to the Lorraine Motel, she explained how the Lorraine has facilitated gentrification because of all the tourism (people like us) and business it brings. As a result, the natives of Memphis who truly belong to this area have been pushed out. In investing to preserve memories of the past, those in the present have been sidelined and forgotten. Would MLK want his memory to enable the displacement of the low-income and impoverished? Jacqueline would certainly disagree, her sign quoting MLK — “the poor have been shut out of our minds, and driven from our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.”
Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum (the Burkle Estate) — The Journey out of Bondage
Known as the “Slavehaven”, the Burkle Estate tells the story of German immigrant Jacob Burkle. As part of the Underground Railroad along the Mississippi River, his home was used as a resting point for enslaved Africans seeking liberation from bondage. Part of our tour comprised a viewing of the underground basement where those escaping to freedom would rest and recover. In order to present as a typical slave owner, Burkle purchased two individuals to work outside on the estate.
Our tour guide (whose name I deeply wished I remembered) made it clear from the beginning: “Europeans did not bring slaves from Africa. They brought Africans from Africa.” This distinction in language makes clear the language, culture, lineage and overall identity that was stripped of those who were kidnapped from across the Atlantic. She later pointed to a quote:
“Until the lion has a historian, the hunter will always be the hero.”
It is nothing but an uphill battle to reclaim, preserve and share history that does not fit within the general public memory. It becomes even more difficult when the heroes and villains, the oppressors and the victims of the past have already been defined and one then tries to retroactively redefine and add new meaning to those roles. How often are we taught to conceptualize enslaved Africans as utterly helpless? As incapable beyond the confines of what their slave holders allowed them to be? On the contrary, as was emphasized on this tour, their state of violent oppression fueled a desperate and powerful spirit to utilize all at their disposal in the quest for liberation.
One example was the entire ecosystem of communication developed to guide enslaved individuals towards the North.
- Spirituals with coded language (“Angels” means “Abolitionists” — both start with the letter A; “Jordan”, a reference to the Jordan River, refers to the Mississippi River or the general boundary between bondage and freedom)
- Talking drums (an instrument utilized by the enslaved when they were forbidden to sing)
- Quilts (abolitionists sowed symbols into quilts to communicate to those escaping e.g. a monkey’s wrench = start preparing for the journey; a wagon = the journey begins now)
- Lanterns (specific kinds of lanterns were placed in the windows of houses to indicate a place of refuge)
It’s powerful to imagine a population who, even after being so fiercely subjugated, still found ways to successfully fight back. Thus, true emancipation does not simply rest in the hands of the lawmakers who sign policies into law, but actually belongs to the persecuted who fervently hold onto the often difficult belief that there exists a path in which the condition of their people can be improved.
Memphis, TN — More Photos
Birmingham, AL
-Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
-16th St Baptist Church (a major organizing hub for local protests and site of the November 1963 KKK bombing killing 4 Black girls)
-Kelly Ingram Park (site of the viral 1963 images/videos of “Bull” Connor’s dogs and hoses being unleashed upon peaceful protestors)
-Vulcan Park & Museum (tribute to Birmingham’s iron and steel industry [“the Pittsburgh of the South”] and home of the largest cast iron statue in the world)
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute — What Are You Willing to Die For
Like many of the other museums we explored, the local institute covered some of the major events of the civil rights struggle in the 1950s and 1960s. One particular exhibit discussed the Freedom Riders: the Black and white folks who rode interstate buses into the Jim Crow South as a way to test the Supreme Court decisions which outlawed segregation on such buses as well as bus terminals. Unsurprisingly, many of these protestors had crowds waiting for them at their destinations ready to harass and beat them.
One particular video resonated with me deeply. It was a video of Freedom Rider Jim Zwerg who was interviewed from a hospital bed after he was severely injured by a mob in Birmingham. When asked about his commitment to the cause of desegregation, he said “we’re dedicated to this. We’ll take hitting, we’ll take beating…we’re willing to accept death. We’re going to keep coming until we can ride from anywhere in the South to any place else in the South.”
Now, one cannot even begin to detail the countless Black souls that dedicated all they had in the fight to desegregate. However, the reason why I detail the narrative of this one specific white individual is because it pushed me to think about the idea of sincerely committing to a cause that isn’t directly tied to me. Joe built a conviction to the vision of a desegregated America through which he felt compelled to give his life for the cause. Some may fairly argue that, with his privilege and status in society, making that sacrifice should be expected. Regardless, I do ask myself — what systems currently benefit me to where I am unwilling or unmotivated to question them for the sake of perhaps improving the condition of others? What parts of my reality am I prepared to change, even if it means incurring discomfort, for the betterment of the masses?
It’s easy to look to the past, see blatantly racist systems like segregation, and conclude that those who did not actively fight against it were complicit in the oppression. The challenge is posing that same question to ourselves today and then assessing whether our apathy towards harmful systems not directly targeting us inhibits meaningful action and purposeful allyship. Would you actually be willing to die in the pursuit of social change, especially if your life could still continue comfortably if you weren’t?
It reminds me of another MLK quote found in the civil rights museum in Atlanta — “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute — The Depth of Your Reality
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was one of the key masterminds behind the commercial boycott of Birmingham businesses challenging segregation. As part of the organizing, his team led a walking tour of downtown Birmingham to identify which businesses to target and where sit-ins should occur. Using the 16th St Baptist Church as an organizing hub, they sent protestors in waves so as people were arrested at sit-ins and other demonstrations, they were replaced with additional bodies. The power of local organizing can never be underestimated.
Reverend Shuttlesworth invited Martin Luther King Jr., then a 26-year-old pastor, to participate in the Birmingham boycott. In April 1963, King and others were arrested for violating the city’s law against public demonstrations. While in jail, MLK penned a letter, now known as the famous “Letter from a Birmingham jail” in which he responded to pastors who believed his involvement in the boycott was “unwise and untimely.”
In reading this letter, I found MLK’s depth of his people’s reality moving.
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”…
MLK paints an incredibly vivid picture of the condition of his people in ways that are not simply regurgitated but internalized and felt on a personal level. I was immediately reminded of a statement by our teacher Ieasha Prime who said:
“the strength of a person’s voice is not derived from the loudness of their voice but from the depth of their reality.”
The drive we have to remain committed to any struggle must come from a place of deep emotional connection. To intimately know and articulate the experiences of your people means possessing a felt history that does not simply exist in books or articles but in the hearts of people. I think too often I want to rush in championing a cause without having fully grasped the lives and stories of those most impacted. Such understanding requires patience and an acknowledgement that holding even some of the pain of others takes time.
Kelly Ingram Park — Our Sister Betty
This was the very park where, in 1963, Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety “Bull” Connor unleashed dogs, water hoses and tanks upon peaceful protestors challenging segregation imposed by local businesses. These images would soon go viral particularly because of the children, recruited by Reverend Shuttlesworth in a strategic effort to increase protest numbers and evoke mass empathy (“The Children’s Crusade”), who were also attacked.
As we walked from one monument to the next, we had the blessing of running into Betty, a 62-year-old Birmingham native, who began sharing her own story of the events she experienced in the 1960s.
Betty was 5 years old when the 16th St Baptist Church, right across from Kelly Ingram Park, was bombed by the KKK. Although she was young at the time, she said the memory of that day is still extremely vivid in her mind. She was playing on the street a couple blocks over with her friends and when news spread of the bombing, her mom told her and her siblings to run inside and hide under their bed. That feeling of fear has stayed with her.
With regards to the 1963 protests, she said her late husband, 17 at the time, was on the frontlines. “Anytime he reflected on those moments, he would begin to cry” she said, “and I’d have to always remind him that we won.”
Betty spoke about those moments in the 1960s with incredible optimism. “We fought, we preserved and we overcame.” She said no one in Birmingham can deny what happened then. “Everyone acknowledges it.”
One thing struck me about Betty: she was walking along Ingram Park looking at each of the statutes intently in a way that made us believe she was a tourist. Almost 6 decades later, Betty still finds deep meaning in those moments she experienced as a child. It was her deep connection to these events that allowed us to benefit from her lived experience.
Birmingham, AL — More Photos
Montgomery, AL
[Stayed at the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum]
-Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Legacy Museum
-EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Lynching Memorial)
-Rosa Parks Museum (commemorating the legacy of Rosa Parks as well as Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and the Women’s Political Council in the 1955 bus boycott)
-Riverfront Park
-1st White House of the Confederacy
Equal Justice Initiative — Legacy Museum: The Dissonance Surrounding Slavery
The Legacy Museum, built on land that was formerly used as one of Montgomery’s main slave markets where the captured were sold, focuses on Black oppression in America in 4 parts: slavery, racial terrorism, the Jim Crow South and mass incarceration.
One of the key stats highlighted was the fact that after international slave trade was banned in the U.S. in 1808, an explosion of domestic slave trading occurred in which over 1 million slaves were sent from the North to the South. Half of this 1 million were either separated from their parents or their children.
In the slavery section, one exhibit places side-by-side the advertisements slave owners placed in newspapers to market their “human property” and the harrowing stories of the formerly enslaved speaking about their experiences post-Emancipation. Printed excerpts included such language like “she’s 13 years old and is good with her hands…he’s the best stone mason in the city and can learn anything…” As much as these owners highlighted “positive” attributes of their human chattel, they simultaneously were comfortable with the idea that these humans were inherently inferior with no capacity to ever match the intellect of their white counterparts. They both humanized and dehumanized the enslaved. Next to these marketing blurbs were personal stories like “we were locked up in a pen…my mom was on the selling block…her getting sold was more traumatic than any actual beating I received.”
We continue to do this today with those who are murdered by police in the U.S. We as a society afford humanity to those who have attributes or qualities that denote some type of value to us e.g. she was a nurse…he was a high school teacher…she was involved in her community etc. while also being fully comfortable dehumanizing those same people into undeserving “criminals” through every small infraction, conviction, mistake (regardless if you want to argue if it’s justified or not) they may have committed.
Those who are most easy to dehumanize are the weak and the impoverished. In response, Bryan Stevenson says powerfully “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”
Equal Justice Initiative — National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Lynching Memorial): Power in a Name
One of my primary reasons for embarking on this road trip to the South was specifically to visit the Center of Peace and Justice. Its primary purpose is to begin the long and arduous process of documenting the racial terror lynchings that occurred in the South after the Civil War. While the names, dates, and stories for more than 4,000 lynchings are captured, there are clearly thousands more that will likely never be known. Again, who is documenting and erasing history as it happens is relevant.
One of the most powerful elements of this memorial is the physical arrangement of names. Each name is engraved on a slab and each slab is connected to a pipe that is attached to the ceiling. As you walk through the memorial, the ground below you begins to descend and you are left slowly looking up as the slabs appear higher and higher. It begins to feel like each slab, each name, each body is slowly being hung. At the same time, given the sheer number of slabs grouped together, it also feels like everyone as a collective is being elevated, their souls now ascending beyond the terrors of this life and into the next realm.
As we’ve each felt in protests against police brutality, mass shootings, military bombings, there is immense power in stating the name of the victims and voicing their existence into reality. It is our attempt to bring life into bodies that are otherwise seen simply as disposable targets by their oppressors. Experiencing the names of those who were lynched helps reshape our understanding of the past by bringing new significance to lives that never had a place in history.
Montgomery, AL — More Photos
Atlanta, GA
-National Center for Civil and Human Rights
-Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park (comprises King’s birthplace, family church, and tomb)
-Sunday Services at Ebenezer Baptist Church
-The Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam
-Springreens Community Cafe (local halal soul food joint)
-Atlanta History Museum (home of the Cyclorama, a 360-degree painting standing 49 ft tall and over 360 ft long depicting the Battle of Atlanta in the Civil War)
-ATL’s Little Five Points neighborhood
-Knicks vs. Hawks: Game 3 at State Farm Arena (Ice Trae/Hawks in 7 pls)
-Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park
-The Roof at Ponce City Market
National Center for Civil and Human Rights — MLK & Vietnam
In the mid-twentieth century, Atlanta was known as “the city too busy to hate.” With more Black folks attaining clout in the 1940s relative to other Southern cities, elected mayors tended to be more moderate rather than strict segregationists. This did not preclude various violent episodes endured by the Black community as a result of living in a segregated city.
This museum, located in the heart of Atlanta, focused immensely on MLK’s life and primarily because Atlanta is his birth place. As with other museums, MLK’s life post-Voting Rights Act of 1965 is barely covered. In the politicization of his legacy, many want to believe he had little else to do after securing the already constitutionally guaranteed right to vote for Black folks.
What was heartening was a special exhibit in the basement of the museum in which several of MLK’s original speech papers were on display, courtesy of Morehouse College. One particular speech of interest was discussing his opposition to the Vietnam War. MLK responded to critics asking why he was speaking on a U.S. foreign affair, saying “the inquirers have not known me, my commitment and my calling.” To most Americans of that time and even today, MLK was palatable only to the point where his positions were relatively aligned with that which did not disrupt the white power structures that be. To suddenly challenge government spending, U.S. imperial motives and the military industrial complex was a step too far. Later in the speech, MLK also responds to those who criticized anyone resorting to violence in protesting for civil rights. “They ask [as] if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.”
Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam & Community Cafe — Blackamerican Islam
This musjid used to be a former Nation of Islam (temple) and attached to it is an incredible halal soul food spot, Community Cafe. Brother Hassaan, an Atlanta native, hosted and fed us with so much love and affection. For those of us who sometimes get comfortable in our ethnic Muslim bubbles, we lose sight of the fact that Islam is not foreign to America. It’s extremely important, especially for the desi/arab/immigrant Muslims like myself, to remain cognizant of the groundwork laid by Black Muslims (including those of the NOI) to create a space for our faith within American society. We could not have made any additional advances as a community were it not for the foundations built several decades prior.
MLK National Historical Park — Ebenezer Baptist Church Worship Service
We had the blessing of attending a portion of Ebenezer Baptist Church’s first in-person worship service since the pandemic began in March 2020. It was a beautiful outdoor gathering.
The woman conducting the prayer made a special mention of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa, OK Massacre. She prayed that God’s Healing Spirit be breathed into our broken human family and that this nation be called to a reckoning of its shameless treatment of Black and indigenous people and folks of color. As someone who delivers sermons often, I saw this as a learning moment: I, along with the majority non-Black congregations I speak to, have much to gain from incorporating such key events in our nation’s history, as atrocious as they are, into our understanding and application of our faith. To sharpen our own tools in our fight for justice requires a deeper comprehension of the struggles and pains endured by other communities who are also challenging the same iniquitous systems.
Atlanta, GA— More Photos
Nashville, TN
-Bella Meade Slave Plantation
-Witness Walls (public artwork honoring the fight for racial equality in Nashville)
-Meyer Wolfe Exhibit (the son of Lithuanian immigrants best known for his portraits of Nashville’s Black Community)
-Nashville Public Library: Civil Rights Room and Votes for Women exhibit
-Woolworth on 5th (initial site of Nashville’s 1960 sit-in movement)
-Country Music Hall of Fame
-Nashville Parthenon (full-scale replica of original Parthenon in Athens as part of 1897 TN Centennial Exposition)
-TN Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park Event (celebrating 225 years of statehood)
-Five Points and The Gulch neighborhoods
Bella Meade Slave Plantation — Reshaping the Past
If you go to the Bella Meade Plantation website, the first thing you are told about the property is that it is a “A Sanctuary of Southern Hospitality.” It turns out that the tour we took, ‘Journey to Jubilee’, documenting the history of enslaved Black folk on this plantation only came into being in 2019. Part of me wanted to book a tour at such a site specifically to see how exactly those in charge of the plantation navigated reckoning with their atrocious past.
The Harding family, the original family of the plantation which was primarily a thoroughbred farm, owned 136 slaves, putting them in the top 5% of slave owners in Tennessee. One of the main stories highlighted was that of Robert Green, a man who was born into slavery and given to the Harding family as a gift. Robert Green soon became the Head Hostler of the farm, demonstrating incredible skill and ability in managing the thoroughbred stock. He continued to work on the plantation following emancipation (he obviously had little choice) and had the opportunity to show the thoroughbred stock to guests like President and Mrs. Cleveland.
The sad reality is that Robert Green is one of just a few enslaved individuals on the plantation whose stories are actually known. As has always been the case for those without power, one can only be acknowledged, let alone deemed worthy of recognition, if truly exceptional in some particular way.
On one info board on the plantation grounds, it reads the following:
The language clearly implies a narrative that formerly enslaved folks had the choice to go anywhere and freely decided to continue to work on the plantation. It falsely applies a sense of agency and autonomy to a population that had little control over their means of livelihood.
Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame — The Banjo
A small note: Although this was only one small section of the venue, we learned that enslaved African musicians introduced the banjo to America. It later fell out of favor with Black folks because of its close association with the ridicule of Blacks in minstrel shows. Today, the meaning behind the banjo takes a completely different form.
Unlike the Rock & Soul Museum in Memphis, which did focus much more attention on the contributions of Black musicians to the formation of rock & roll and blues, the Nashville Hall of Fame was more blatant in its erasure of Black influences on country music. There is much more I would have wanted to add here on our experience in both music museums.
Nashville, TN— More Photos
Louisville, KY
-Muhammad Ali Center
-Grave of Muhammad Ali (on 6/3/21, the 5th anniversary of his passing)
-Muhammad Ali’s childhood home
-Breonna Taylor Memorial
-Kentucky Center for African American Heritage (unveiling of the Blank Slate Monument)
-Grave of Colonel Sanders
Muhammad Ali
We were blessed to be in Louisville, both the birthplace and burial ground of Muhammad Ali, on the 5th anniversary of his passing. To be able to visit the home of Ali as well as recite prayers over his body was extremely humbling. From the Louisville Airport to the major streets, his name is all over the city. His museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, beautifully captures his activism, his journey with faith and his impeccable boxing career. In one portion of the museum, you can actually scroll through a list of almost all of his matches and watch them in full length.
Further, Ali’s humanitarian work is on full display. One example: two weeks after the Thrilla in Manila with Frazier, Ali was in New York watching the news when a story came on about a Jewish community center that was closing because it did not have enough money. It served as a place for senior citizens, many of whom suffered immensely under Nazi Germany. The next morning, Ali went over to the center, spoke to some folks, and wrote a check for $100,000.
The museum also gave some nuanced coverage on our beloved brother Malcolm (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz), Ali’s initial spiritual advisor when he entered into the NOI. Prior to this museum, there was at most one quote of Malcolm X featured in the previous cities we visited. Given how often Malcolm is erased from any mainstream discussion of the Black struggle for civil and human rights, this was disappointing yet unsurprising.
Breonna Taylor
Throughout the city, signs, murals and graffiti art remained demanding justice for Breonna Taylor. Till this day, no one has been charged for her murder. Much of what I felt in Memphis re MLK’s legacy was also felt here. Louisville as a city is ready to preserve and uphold Ali’s legacy of fighting for justice, challenging government powers and demanding dignity for Black folks in America yet lacks the willpower to apply those lessons to the present. In some ways it’s easier to champion ideals of justice and equality, so long as they are relegated to the past and confined to a figure or people that can be disconnected from the present.
Kentucky Center for African American Heritage (KCAAH) — Blank Slate Monument
We arrived at the KCAAH expecting to find a museum of some sort highlighting the state’s Black history. Instead, we walked in on a ceremony celebrating the unveiling of the Blank Slate Monument, a powerful tribute to the Black experience before, during and after the Civil War. Upon the slave ancestor stands the lynched Union Soldier and on top of him is the struggling mother activist. On her back is a baby, representing the future generation that aspires to build on the pain, the struggles and the achievements of its ancestors.
We also had the blessing of later having a conversation with Hosea Williams, the COO of the KCAAH, about the Center’s goal and purpose.
Full Itinerary
Memphis, TN
-Lorraine Motel (where MLK was shot)
-Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum
-I Am a Man Plaza (honoring the legacy of the 1968 sanitation workers who went on strike)
-Rock ’n’ Soul Museum
-Beale St
-A Walmart in Arkansas
Birmingham, AL
-Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
-16th St Baptist Church (a major organizing hub for local protests and site of the November 1963 KKK bombing killing 4 Black girls)
-Kelly Ingram Park (site of the viral 1963 images/videos of “Bull” Connor’s dogs and hoses being unleashed upon peaceful protestors)
-Vulcan Park & Museum (tribute to Birmingham’s iron and steel industry [“the Pittsburgh of the South”] and home of the largest cast iron statue in the world)
Montgomery, AL
[Stayed at the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum]
-Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Legacy Museum
-EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Lynching Memorial)
-Rosa Parks Museum (commemorating the legacy of Rosa Parks as well as Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and the Women’s Political Council in the 1955 bus boycott)
-Riverfront Park
-1st White House of the Confederacy
Atlanta, GA
-National Center for Civil and Human Rights
-Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park (comprises King’s birthplace, family church, and tomb)
-Sunday Services at Ebenezer Baptist Church
-The Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam
-Springreens Community Cafe (local halal soul food joint)
-Atlanta History Museum (home of the Cyclorama, a 360-degree painting standing 49 ft tall and over 360 ft long depicting the Battle of Atlanta in the Civil War)
-ATL’s Little Five Points neighborhood
-Knicks vs. Hawks: Game 3 at State Farm Arena (Ice Trae)
-Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park
-The Roof at Ponce City Market
Nashville, TN
-Bella Meade Slave Plantation
-Witness Walls (public artwork honoring the fight for racial equality in Nashville)
-Meyer Wolfe Exhibit (the son of Lithuanian immigrants best known for his portraits of Nashville’s Black Community)
-Nashville Public Library: Civil Rights Room and Votes for Women exhibit
-Woolworth on 5th (initial site of Nashville’s 1960 sit-in movement)
-Country Music Hall of Fame
-Nashville Parthenon (full-scale replica of original Parthenon in Athens as part of 1897 TN Centennial Exposition)
-TN Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park Event (celebrating 225 years of statehood)
-Five Points and The Gulch neighborhoods
Hodgenville, KY
-Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park
Louisville, KY
-Muhammad Ali Center
-Grave of Muhammad Ali (on 6/3/21, the 5th anniversary of his passing)
-Muhammad Ali’s childhood home
-Breonna Taylor Memorial
-Kentucky Center for African American Heritage (unveiling of the Blank Slate Monument)
-Grave of Colonel Sanders
