The Other

I never knew taking a tour would be so enlightening, but Queen brought both rigour and entertainment into the telling of Black history. She linked details found in the written word to the brick-and-mortar realities of where the events actually occurred.
I was here to research the first-ever travel guide to following the official US Civil Rights Trail in the American South. As a child of the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the South to seek jobs and freedom from racial violence, I was born in Chicago but I found my way to living with my grandmother in a small town just north of Memphis. I grew up in the remnants of the Civil Rights movement, as I was the Black junior class representative on my newly integrated school’s homecoming court. That same school held segregated proms on the premise that white students preferred to host theirs at the still-segregated country club in town.

So, this story was familiar, but looking at it through a traveller’s lens blew my mind.

Designated in 2018, the trail tells a cohesive story of African Americans’ quest for equal education, access to public transportation, freedom from state-sanctioned violence, and more. The official trail starts in the state of Delaware, one of the original 13 British colonies and location of the 1898 Wilmington Massacre, when white supremacists murdered African Americans and deposed the Reconstruction-era elected government. A lawsuit on behalf of Black students in Wilmington became one of the five that comprised the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark 1954 decision that powers so much of the Civil Rights story. The trail then goes westward to Topeka, Kansas, for which the case is named, winding through several south-east and mid-south states along the way.

The beauty of this history is that it is living. Despite the black-and-white imagery that marks this period, it was not so long ago.

Many of the activists who put their lives on the line to desegregate public accommodations and secure voting rights can still tell their story – and they do. Museums in Greensboro, Memphis, Jackson and beyond are dedicated to this history, contextualizing the people and the issues in interactive exhibits. But when travellers mix those museum visits with neighbourhood journeys where they can get a taste of different versions of Southern fare at Black-owned restaurants, interact with people tied to the movement, enjoy Black entertainment and contemplate what those issues then still mean for today, you have a full-circle experience.

On the trail

My journey with Queen made one thing clear. Before you can talk about the movement of African Americans to secure their rights, you’ve got to address the fact that they were stolen people in the first place. But no talk about stolen people can happen before you talk about stolen land. During Queen’s Tour of Possibilities we cruised down Danny Thomas Boulevard, named after the entertainer and philanthropist, where she explained the origins of the brown-and-white street sign we’d seen marking the Trail of Tears.

This was the path of several Native American tribes after they were forcibly removed from their lands following the passing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. They were pushed on foot through a treacherous journey into federal territory west of the Mississippi River into present-day Oklahoma. The day of my tour so happened to also be Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which many cities and states have renamed the traditional Columbus Day, moving it away from the man whom schoolchildren had long been told ‘discovered’ America.

“We don’t call it that other thing anymore,” said Queen, in a matter-of-fact tone that deftly stopped just short of giving us her political take. “It’s hard for me to talk about ‘the founders’ when this place was already found.”

On Danny Thomas Boulevard sits the facility the entertainer founded in 1962, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which treats children with catastrophic illness free of charge. Queen told us about Thomas’ plans to hire an African American architect to design the medical campus’s first building.

“His name was Paul R Williams,” explained Queen. He’d already designed homes for Sinatra, Lucille Ball and others. “But there were people in Memphis who said, ‘Oh no, you cannot bring that Negro up in here,’ and Danny Thomas simply said, ‘Well, either I have who I want, or I’m taking this idea somewhere else.’”

“And as you look left, you will see that they definitely changed their minds.”

Memphis was central to the Civil Rights struggle for many reasons: Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination is one. The striking Black sanitation workers that Dr King was here to support in 1968 when he was shot dead is another. Soon, our ragtag crew cruised into the area where the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel is located.

Queen set the scene by describing how the Lorraine Motel was an oasis for Black travellers during a time when segregation dictated where African Americans slept, ate, worshipped, shopped and learned: “You could have been sitting right next to Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin at the pool. That’s the kind of atmosphere that was here. But all of that changed on 4th April, 1968,” she said, noting the date of Dr King’s assassination.

“The building I pointed out to you over your left shoulder, that was the boarding house where they say James Earl Ray rented a room. He opens the window just a bit,” Queen continued, pointing the opposite direction. “And that’s when Dr King exits Room 306, where you now see the wreath.”

When he was shot, Dr King was standing on the balcony outside his room. Museum visitors can see it, a memorial of sorts, frozen in time, in addition to Ray’s vantage point in the museum annex across the street.

Our journey continued on to the Soulsville community in South Memphis, home of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.

Situated on East McLemore Avenue, this is the site of the original Stax Recording Studio, where luminaries such as The Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes and the Bar-Kays recorded. I learned a lot about the origins of Black music and where it came from, and saw artefacts and memorabilia from the defunct studio’s heyday.
Inside, the story of the Stax sound opens into a real-life church sanctuary relocated here. The qualities comprising that instantly recognized, easily felt sound was rooted in gospel, the kind of soul-stirring, conviction-filled music experienced by African Americans in humble spaces such as this. Other Black music forms such as blues, early rhythm and blues, and country punctuated that special blend. A floor-to-ceiling ‘wall of sound’ features albums and singles recorded here between 1957-1975. Wanna hear blues guitarist Albert King? Or the Staple Singers ‘I’ll Take You There’? A listening station will transport you to a special place inside your heart and soul.

Stax star Isaac Hayes was born north of here, in the same town where I attended high school. A prime exhibit features a bodacious custom Cadillac Eldorado purchased in 1972 as part of Hayes’ contract negotiation. The vehicle included a refrigerated mini bar, TV and gold exterior trim with white fur carpeting. A few years ago, I met the late Hayes in Memphis’ airport and introduced him to my little cousins. He was so sweet and welcoming, not at all flashy like this car – not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Oh, the places you’ll go

The US Civil Rights Trail sprawls through more than 100 locations across 15 states, giving you a huge variety of ways to explore it. From Memphis, I chose to continue my journey on the trail 400km south-east, in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I met Barry McNealy. The educator and guide is noted for his deep knowledge of the movement’s history in the area, which includes the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, the Freedom Riders’ arrival and a period of unrelenting racialised bombings that earned the city the nickname ‘Bombingham.’ During his tour, we stopped at a monument dedicated to the Rev Fred Shuttlesworth, for whom the local airport is now named.

“Shuttlesworth is going to try to integrate Birmingham City Schools,” McNealy explained, describing an effort to get Black students enrolled in an all-white high school in September 1957, a few years after Brown v. Board of Education desegregated public schools. “He’s going to do that by taking his daughter to Philips High School. Her name is Ruby, but her mother’s name was Ruby so they called her Ricky to avoid confusion at the house. When he takes Ricky to Philips, it’s not a surprise because Shuttlesworth has informed the Board of Education, the principal of the school, the police department, and also the government of the City of Birmingham that he’s going to do this.”

McNealy continued, describing how, armed with chains, clubs and brass knuckles, the waiting Ku Klux Klan white supremacist terror group, attacked. “When Shuttlesworth steps out of the car, the Klan savages him. As they’re doing that, his wife gets out the car; she tries to get them off of her husband, and little Ricky jumps out of the car, too.”

Shuttlesworth was badly beaten, his wife stabbed, and his daughter broke her ankle. None of this stopped Shuttlesworth from leading a movement to secure rights for African American citizens.

McNealy is also deeply conversant on the Birmingham Civil Rights District, where you’ll find the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Kelly Ingram Park and 16th Street Baptist Church, a historic Black church that served as a headquarters for movement organizing. It is also the site of the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson. A fifth girl survived the bombing and was blinded in her right eye. In a corner of the park facing the church, a sculpture by Elizabeth MacQueen, called ‘The Four Spirits’, represents the terrifying event.

“What you’re actually looking at is the representation of the last clear image that the fifth little girl saw,” McNealy told me. “Her name is Sarah; her older sister is depicted here, which would be Addie Mae Collins.”

Another 150km further south in Montgomery, Alabama, Michelle Browder started her Sacred Grounds Tour with a moment of silence for the indigenous people of this land. “Everywhere we go has a hint of Native American history. You cannot come here and just delve right into the Civil War. You can’t come here and just immediately start talking about slavery; we have to first talk about the native people that were here first, and the atrocities that happened with them. So we acknowledge that.”

Browder is the great niece to Aurelia Browder, a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the 1956 US Supreme Court decision that ended segregation on public transportation. She was taking us on
a short walk to the riverfront where she discussed the horrors of the domestic slave trade, which flourished well after the Trans-Atlantic human trafficking trade was abolished.

“The trade grew because they were bringing folks from plantations where they were, you know, breeding them, and you have 57 years from 1808 to the end of the Civil War,” said Browder, describing the extreme efforts to replenish forced labour camps and commodify Black bodies through ‘natural increase’, the euphemism used by white enslavers. Montgomery is home to both the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration as well as the National Lynching Memorial. I marvelled at the existence of such a place, the first lynching memorial in the USA, partly because the telling of African American contributions in Montgomery often occupies the same space as Confederate narratives. At the Alabama state capitol, you might see a tribute to the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, then walk a few steps past a Confederate commemorative plaque, whose very existence is diametrically opposed to the Black freedom struggle.

Heading further eastwards to the coast, the Carolinas are good places to see how African Americans became foundational to DNA of the United States. Charleston, South Carolina, was a major port for enslaved Africans and will be the site of the International African American Museum, set to open in 2022. In North Carolina, the Civil Rights story is curated in museums, monuments and public art in towns featuring thriving Black-owned businesses that manifest the ancestors’ wildest dreams of generational wealth and stability.

Aya Shabu and her Whistle Stop Tours is a go-to in Durham, North Carolina, which is rich in Black history, including Civil Rights. We walked in the footsteps of activists in the downtown area – “because people had to integrate to get into the city buildings,” Shabu said. While there, we get a bite to eat. Beyu Caffe and Dame’s Chicken and Waffles are both Black-owned restaurants, known for their tasty fare. Dame’s owners doubled down on the sweet-and-savoury combo because they wanted to make eating out at this jazz-themed restaurant an event. With several locations, including this one, it worked.

“When you’re sitting there eating that food and listening to that jazz, you can’t help but be happy”, said Randy Wadsworth, who co-owns Dame’s with his long-ago college roommate, Dame Moore.

Durham was also the home of Pauli Murray, a queer Black woman and a founder of the National Organization for Women, whose Howard Law School paper critically informed Brown v. Board of Education. Shabu’s walking tours included Murray’s childhood home and a series of murals around town that behold her countenance and contextualize her contributions. In so many ways, Murray was a person ahead of her time: the only woman in her Howard University Law School class where she graduated first. She also was the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest and the first Black person to earn a Doctor of the Science of Law degree from Yale Law School. While it’s not too late for Murray to be a household name, I couldn’t help but lament how long, long overdue is the fullness of her recognition.

US Civil Rights Trail Highlights

Key locations from the movement and establishments where you can enjoy some authentic Southern culture, as selected by Deborah D Douglas, author of the US Civil Rights Trail guidebook

The official US Civil Rights Trail starts in Wilmington, Delaware, in the east and Topeka, Kansas, to the west. Visitors can undertake sections of the sprawling trail as part a longer road trip, or just by visiting a selected stop as a day trip or weekend break. But however you’re planning on experiencing the trail, the following are key sites to consider visiting that will enhance your understanding of both the movement and Southern culture.

In the Mississippi Delta, the Civil Rights history is as rich
as the soil. You can get here in just a short drive from Memphis to the north and Jackson, Mississippi, from the south. A series of small towns and rural areas along Highway 49 showcase people and events critical to the growth of this movement.

Several sites on the highway amplify the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a Chicago teen who was visiting family for the summer and whose death was a driving force of the modern Civil Rights movement. Start with the ruins of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, 16km north of Greenwood, Mississippi, in nearby Money. For years, a marker told the story of Emmett’s fateful encounter with Carolyn Bryant and subsequent lynching, but in the same year of commemorating Emmett’s 80th birthday, the marker has gone missing.

Officials at The Emmett Till Interpretive Center (emmett-till.org) have asked the federal government to designate the surrounding area a National Historic Park. This powerful tribute would also be a welcome economic driver, while subjecting vandals to federal charges. The engaging Interpretive Center is located in Sumner, Mississippi, across from the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, where travellers can tour the courtroom where an all-white jury failed to convict Emmett’s murderers.

After a day of touring, the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi, is a good spot to unwind with live music, tasty Southern food and friendly locals. The club has hotel rooms up top, but for a quieter night, The Traveler’s Hotel on Third Street (stayattravelers.com), is a good bet. Situated in a 1920s-era stopover for railroad workers, each room features colourful handmade quilts, which you can buy if you can’t stand to part with the one in your room.

North of here is Little Rock, Arkansas, home to one of the crown jewels of the Civil Rights narrative, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site (nps.gov). This living monument is now a fully integrated school. In 1957, however, white residents filled the streets outside it, determined to keep nine Black students from entering. The school, a vintage gas station across the street and a visitor centre that contains a small museum are part of a National Historic Site. A commemorative bus bench honouring Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, sits nearby.

While in Little Rock, be sure to eat at Lassis Inn for
a chance to be steeped in the social life of the movement. Inside the bright blue exterior of this restaurant is where Civil Rights leader Daisy Bates and other activists met for meals. Try the buffalo ribs, where the big-boned buffalo fish is cut into riblets for ease of dipping and eating.

To the east in Greensboro, North Carolina, is the site of the Woolworth’s lunch counter where four Black male college students, The Greensboro Four, staged a sit-in for the right to enjoy public accommodations. Today, the Woolworth’s building is now the International Civil Rights Center & Museum (sitinmovement.org). A monument called February One, which honours the four young men, stands at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University (ncat.edu).

Washington, DC, is central to the Civil Rights journey: it’s where Congress passed key legislation protecting voting rights and access to public accommodations and housing. This is where the Supreme Court made up its collective mind to ensure education access through its Brown v. Board decision.

A Washington, DC, must-see is the National African American Museum of History and Culture (nmaahc.si.edu). It tells the story of the African American experience through interactive exhibits, artefacts, artwork, music and more. One of several destroyed River Site signs marking where Emmett Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River went on temporary display in September. The sign is riddled with 317 bullet holes in a more recent act of anti-Black racism.

While you’re at the museum, eat communally at the museum’s Sweet Home Cafe, or perhaps venture out to Ben’s Chili Bowl (benschilibowl.com) on U Street, an historic hub of Black culture and a favourite of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. This beloved eatery remained untouched during the uprisings that occurred in the wake of his 1968 assassination.