The U.S. Civil Rights Trail
“What happened here changed the world”
![Greensboro Counter](https://www.boomermagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Greensboro_Counter.jpg)
The new U.S. Civil Rights Trail links courthouses, schools, museums, churches and other landmarks where activists challenged segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.
![Memphis_Museum Civil Rights Trail](http://www.boomermagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CRT_Memphis_Museum.jpg)
Virginia has two sites on the trail: the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial at Capitol Square in Richmond and the Robert Russa Moton High School and Museum in Farmville, birthplace of the student-led Civil Rights movement.
A Virginia Tourism Corporation video about Moton Museum reflects the philosophy of all trail sites:
“I’ll always believe in the power of place, to be in this space where history happened,” said Cameron Patterson, managing director of Moton Museum.
![Moton High School and Museum](http://www.boomermagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/CRT_Farmville_MotonSchool.jpg)
“Use history as a source of healing, to not repeat those same mistakes,” said Cainan Townsend, director of education at the museum.
“Farmville is a place where ordinary people made extraordinary change, and that’s something I think we all need to remember,” said Dr. Larissa Fergeson, history professor at Longwood University.
Highlights of more than 100 attractions across 14 states include:
- The F.W. Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina, once the site
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute of a groundbreaking sit-in, now a Civil Rights museum.
- In Atlanta, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthplace and gravesite and the Center for Civil and Human Rights.
- The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Dr. King was assassinated; now the National Civil Rights Museum.
- The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama, facing the park where police used fire hoses and dogs against student demonstrators.
- The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson.
- The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where a voting-rights march turned violent.
[Editor’s Note: see also BOOMER’s article on other African-American historical museums.]