Changing the world: New book provides guide to US Civil Rights Trail

It would be an understatement to call the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s one of the most important periods in American history.

In ways that are likely difficult for young people to fully grasp, American society — especially the tightly segregated Deep South — was radically transformed by the movement.

African Americans fought bravely to have their basic human and political rights recognized and achieved tremendous gains that still resonate today.

The movement was also rooted in particular locations, such as churches, schools, parks, homes and other landmarks.

Cultural tourists who wish to learn more about the civil rights era and to visit those historic sites can follow the  U.S. Civil Rights Trail, a network of more than 120 notable civil rights destinations across 14 Southern states that was established officially on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2018.

The destinations on the trail served as the locations of famous marches, rallies and non-violent demonstrations.

Beginning with the training of Black Tuskegee pilots in 1941 through President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the U.S. Civil Rights Trail follows a timeline of 36 major events, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions and Congressional actions, providing a framework for each decade of the movement.

The trail features landmarks in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma.

And now visitors can take advantage of a lavish new companion guide to the trail.

Author and long-time Alabama Tourism Director Lee Sentell has published a book called “The Official United States Civil Rights Trail.”

The 128-page hardcover book showcases more than 200 iconic photographs of the locations on the trail by former Southern Living photographer Art Meripol.

The book is subtitled, “What happened here changed the world.”

And given the enormous social and political changes in American culture since the peak of the civil rights movement, this hardly seems like hyperbole.

A launch event was held for the book at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on Oct. 12.

Along with Sentell, the guest speakers included  Charles Avery Jr., a participant of the 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham; Dr. Dina Avery, author of “Jumping the Train: An Extraordinary True Story” and daughter of Charles Avery; DeJuana Thompson, CEO of the BCRI; and Rev. Arthur Price Jr., the pastor of 16th Street Baptist Church.

In addition, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin and the speakers took part in a roundtable discussion with Carver High School students.

The Magic City played an extremely important role in the history of the civil rights movement, Sentell said.

“Birmingham was an epicenter of the civil rights movement,” Sentell said in a news release prior to the event. “From Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing to the Children’s Crusade and other historic events, it’s important that we honor our brave leaders who stood on the front lines to fight for fundamental freedoms.”

“It’s a privilege to honor men and women who bravely fought for their civil liberties despite constant threats of violence to themselves and the Black community,” Thompson said.

The events of the civil rights era in Birmingham, including the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, had a massive political impact.

It is thought that these events in Birmingham helped lay the ground for the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964, Sentell said.

“What happened in Birmingham changed the world,” he said.

“More than 50 years ago, my classmates and I marched peacefully to 16th Street Baptist Church to fight for desegregation and never imagined the impact one group of young students would have on the future of our Magic City,” Charles Avery Jr. said. “This demonstration and countless others have played an integral role in shaping Birmingham’s history and the monumental part we played in the civil rights movement.”

The BCRI “is committed to enlightening each generation about civil rights history, and we believe ‘The Official U.S. Civil Rights Trail’ book serves as a unique educational tool to help us accomplish our mission,” Thompson said.

The new companion book can “help connect travelers of all ages with the stories and places that changed the world,” Woodfin said.

Visitors can use the book, as well as the trail’s official website, to immerse themselves in civil rights history.

The book itself also features a new augmented reality feature, connecting generations of readers to civil rights history through technology.

“No other tourist promotion has an augmented concept like this,” Sentell told Iron City Ink. “Three spreads literally come to life.”

“We want to encourage people to take their own journey along the Civil Rights Trail, particularly places in our own backyard like Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma while sharing the journey with others,” Sentell said.

Sentell, who has served as Alabama tourism director for nearly 20 years, began organizing the trail in partnership with 14 neighboring state tourism agencies in 2007, making the trail the first of its kind. It has attracted regional and international acclaim since its 2018 launch.

The trail is important, at least in part, because it gives the Southern states on the trail a chance to tell their story.

“In every state, like every family, you inherit what they did, and if we don’t tell our story, other people will, and we probably won’t like their version,” Sentell said.

The efforts to promote the trail also show “that Alabama is a much more enlightened state than we might have seen to be in the past where people are no longer afraid to talk about the subject, and I think that is healthy,” Sentell said. “I think it’s healthy for democracy.”

The trail is also important to Alabama for a very practical reason.

“If people don’t know their history, they may repeat their mistakes,” Sentell said.

There is also a strong economic motive for properly introducing and showcasing sites related to civil rights, he said.

“The first two years that the EJI [Equal Justice Initiative] had their museum and memorial in Montgomery, it drew 400,000 people the first year and 500,000 the next year,” Sentell said. “In those years, for the first time, Alabama tourism grew by a million people a year two years in a row. If people ask, ‘Are visitors really coming?’ I can point to those numbers.”

Alabama “has never been proactive in marketing to the children or the grandchildren of the African Americans who left the South in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and we want to make then feel welcome,” he said

The genesis of the book project was the official website that Luckie, the Birmingham advertising agency, did for the trail in 2018, Sentell said.

The website was great, he said.

However, the trail needed “something that people will hold in their hand,” Sentell said.

“This is not a history of civil rights. This is a history of the civil rights movement focused on the 14 cities that have the most civil rights tourism potential.”

Luckie laid out a book in early 2020 at Sentell’s request, but it was initially mostly photos, he said.

“We had to tell readers why stuff happened,” he said. “We can’t assume that people know this history.”

He spent most of 2020 writing the book.

Four sites in Birmingham are featured on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail and in Sentell’s book.

There are Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park and the BCRI, all adjacent to each other downtown.

Also featured is the original location of Bethel Baptist Church, where a legendary civil rights figure — the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth — served as pastor at the peak of the civil rights era.

Shuttlesworth, for whom the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport is named, has been somewhat “overshadowed” by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who came to Birmingham to take part in demonstrations planned for Easter weekend in April 1963, Sentell said.

However, that was “intentional” in Shuttlesworth’s planning, Sentell said.

Shuttlesworth had long been active in the movement in Birmingham and “had been arrested so many times that nobody paid attention to him anymore,” Sentell said. “He specifically went after King because he wanted star power.”

While in Birmingham, King wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which Sentell calls “an amazing defense of the movement.”

Sentell hopes the book will “shine a light on what happened in the communities” affected by the movement.

“Every community created their own reaction to whatever the legal complications were,” he said.

People of both races seem more comfortable now in talking about the civil rights movement, Sentell said.

“Just like the Vietnam War, for 20 years after nobody wanted to talk about it,” he said.

Then people became more comfortable talking about the war, he said.

“I think the same thing can be said regarding the civil rights movement,” Sentell said.

The U.S. Civil Rights Trail book was published by Alabama Media Group in partnership with the Alabama Tourism Department.

Proceeds will benefit a campaign to install LED lighting at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

The book is available for purchase directly through Alabama Media Group and via Amazon.

For more information about the book or to plan your journey on the trail, visit civilrightstrail.com.