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Monday, January 16th is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the U.S. — a school and bank holiday that honors the late Civil Rights activist. In the interest of keeping young minds fresh (and educated), here are some places you can visit with the kids to teach them more about the history of civil rights in America (bonus: you can visit them any time of year.)
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is ripe with civil rights history – and tragedy. On Sep. 15, 1963, four young black girls were killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The city’s Kelly Ingram Park was the site of a massive peaceful march, to which police responded by turning police dogs and fire hoses on the protesters. And six months earlier, MLK Jr. wrote a a famous letter from his Birmingham Jail cell that argued, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” A replica of his cell – and many other important sites -are on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, where kids can learn about the city’s role in the Civil Rights Movement with displays and cultural events.
Washington, D.C.
by: Danny Nguyễn – Courtesy: Trip.com
It’s hard to escape history in D.C., where the oldest buildings (including the White House) were built by slaves. Segregation continued in the city, long after the slave trade was banned in 1850. Visitors today can tour the Frederick Douglass House (the home of the famous ex slave-turned-abolitionist), the National Museum of American History (which includes the famous “whites only” lunch counter from Woolworth’s in North Carolina), and the relatively new Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial that was erected in the National Mall in 2011.
Atlanta, Georgia
by: Jason Planck – Courtesy: Trip.com
Atlanta is widely considered the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement, and its history is rife with protests, marches, and boycotts. Teach the kids about pioneers in the movement like Alonzo Herndon, who was a former slave and became the city’s first black millionaire (you can tour his mansion-turned-museum), or Harry Belafonte, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and even former president Bill Clinton, all featured in the outdoor International Civil Rights Walk of Fame promenade. The promenade lies on a famous 1.5-mile stretch of road in the Sweet Auburn Historic District, which also includes MLK Jr.’s birth home.
Montgomery, Alabama
by: rfduck flickr – Courtesy: Trip.com
You probably know it as the site of one of the most famous landmark moves in civil rights history: Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955. Her arrest and trial led to an organized boycott of the city’s bus lines, and eventually to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which chose a young reverend named Martin Luther King Jr. as its president. You can tour the Rosa Parks Museum and its Cleveland Avenue Time Machine, which utilizes multimedia effects to re-create the bus boycott, or the indoor auditorium that hosts lectures and performances from influential civil rights leaders of today.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati, Ohio)
by: Steve DeAngelo – Courtesy: Trip.com
The Ohio River played a big part during the American era of slavery, when slaves would cross over from Covington, Kentucky to freedom in Cincinnati via a network of secret safe houses and routes known as the Underground Railroad. Former slaves like Harriet Tubman, Northern abolitionists, philanthropists and church leaders like Quaker Thomas Garrett, all assisted escapees, while Harriet Beecher Stowe, famous for penning the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, witnessed the plight of the fugitives at the section of “railroad” in Cincinnati. The museum now sits on the site of their crossing and features exhibits about slavery, the history of U.S. freedom and its challenges, and even today’s human trafficking crisis.
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Source: gogobot.com