Chattel slavery and racial segregation were only abolished with great struggle and sacrifice. For more than a century across the United States, African Americans and their abolitionist allies put their safety on the line during marches, demonstrations, sit-ins and other activities with two goals: freedom and equality. The locations of these acts remain as touchstones, where history was made and where heroes — both were leaders and ordinary citizens — were revealed. These settings allow today’s visitors to honor the past and to connect with the anti-slavery and Civil Rights movements.
Standing where activists marched, organized and faced violence provides something no textbook can describe. From bridges to churches to lunch counters, these are sites where people confronted injustice. Visiting them transforms dates and names into lived experiences, offering opportunities for reflection and inspiration.
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
The issue of slavery divided the United States from its very inception, but the anti-slavery proponents of abolition largely limited themselves to impassioned speeches and entreating pamphlets. That all changed in Kansas, where a bloody guerilla war was waged between those for and against slavery. One of the most militant abolitionists was John Brown, who brought the war back East in a daring raid on the largest federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in October of 1859. Brown and his heavily armed party took possession of the arsenal, arresting citizens and arming slaves before being overpowered by Colonel Robert E. Lee.
Brown was promptly convicted of treason and executed. Mourned as a martyr by some and decried as a terrorist by others, Brown’s daring raid undeniably heightened the tensions that would help ignite the coming Civil War. At Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, visitors can tour John Brown’s Fort, the armory’s fire engine and guard house where Brown and his raiders barricaded themselves during their final stand against federal forces, along with 24 other restored 19th-century buildings. The park also includes the Heyward Shepherd Monument, which honors the free Black man who was killed by Brown’s men to become the first casualty of the raid.
International Civil Rights Center & Museum
Greensboro, North Carolina
“We don’t serve Negroes here.”
That was the message at many places throughout the Jim Crow South, but that began to change on February 1, 1960, when four Black college freshmen sat down at the whites-only F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They returned — and were joined by others — day after day, in a movement that soon spread along the East Coast and throughout the South. Though sit-in participants remained peaceful, demonstrators were arrested, some attacked with fire hoses and tear gas. The state police fired into a crowd of demonstrators on the campus of South Carolina State University, killing three students and injuring 27 other participants. On July 25, after about 70,000 people had participated in sit-ins, the Woolworth’s lunch counter desegregated.
“We operate in the landmark itself — the landmark is part of our exhibit,” said Will Harris, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the center and museum’s principal scholar. “And the full-scale, 55-seat lunch counter room is the centerpiece of our artifacts and of our tour. Then we have 13 additional galleries that are used to present the story.”
The 35,000-square-foot museum’s 14 permanent exhibits include pictures, artifacts, and video narratives and re-enactments, along with interactive components. “We do a narrative tour of the whole Civil Rights Movement at the time that lasts about an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half,” Harris said. “There’s also a recorded tour with our best guides, which can be accessed for as long as visitors choose to watch. Then visitors can walk through the exhibits and do their own reading and check things out.”
Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.
During his last public speech on April 11, 1865, Abraham Lincoln became the first president to advocate for Black voting rights — albeit only for males who had served in the U.S. military or who were deemed “intelligent.” Four days later, Lincoln, who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed 4 million enslaved people and overseen the Union victory, was assassinated. The war was over, but the battle for civil rights had just begun.
Nearly 60 years after his death, the monument to the martyred president was dedicated in a ceremony that had seats of honor for Confederate veterans and armed soldiers to segregate Black onlookers from the white crowd. Forty-one years later, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd estimated at a quarter million people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C. The march was a seminal moment for the Civil Rights Movement, helping galvanize lawmakers to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
From the Reflecting Pool to the central chamber containing the colossal marble statue of the 16th president, visitors ascend 87 (four score and seven) granite marble steps. The National Mall and the monuments on it are open to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, and the Lincoln Memorial is particularly stunning by moonlight.
Edmund Pettus Bridge
Selma, Alabama
The revolution was televised on March 7, 1965, as some 600 citizens gathered at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama, to march 54 miles to Alabama’s capitol in Montgomery, demanding the right to vote. Six blocks from the church on the Edmund Pettus Bridge — named in honor of a Confederate General and leader of the Ku Klux Klan — state troopers and vigilantes savagely clubbed the marchers and slashed them with bullwhips, as a horrified nation watched “Bloody Sunday” on their living room televisions.
The aftermath of the brutality shocked the entire country. Two weeks later, Martin Luther King Jr. and 3,200 protesters completed the march. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law on August 6, 1965. Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the landmark piece of legislation prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
The bridge still stands and is now a National Historic Landmark where visitors can follow in the footsteps of those undaunted activists. Next to the infamous bridge, the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute is the starting point of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. The museum has an interpretive center with galleries that explore the movement and the day that changed history.
Canton Freedom House Civil Rights Museum
Canton, Mississippi
One of the country’s “Big Four” Civil Rights groups, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 in Chicago by interracial students and focused on nonviolent direct action. CORE supported Martin Luther King’s Montgomery bus boycott and organized integrated freedom rides in 1961.
In 1964, CORE and other groups organized “Freedom Summer,” sending more than 1,000 volunteers (largely students, but also clergy, lawyers and healthcare workers) to Mississippi to assist local activists in organizing protests, registering voters and teaching Black children in “Freedom Schools.” Hundreds of journalists also descended on the state, and “Freedom Houses” became headquarters and havens where activists lived and worked.
In the small town of Canton, Mississippi, Black business owners George and Rembert Washington rented a house at 838 George Washington Avenue to freedom rider and CORE activist George Raymond, and it quickly became a community hub for local and visiting activists, including Martin Luther King Jr. The Washingtons paid a heavy price. Segregationists forced suppliers to halt deliveries to their grocery store, their gas pumps were removed, and the house on Washington Avenue was targeted with Molotov cocktails and gunshots. In June 1964, vigilantes threw a bomb, shattering the front windows. Still, the Washingtons and the activists stood firm.
Today, the Washingtons’ grandson, Glen Cotton, has restored the modest frame structure, which is the last standing Freedom House in the state that was used by CORE. It now serves as the Canton Freedom House Civil Rights Museum, honoring the sacrifices of his family and the people who fought to bring racial justice to Mississippi. (Three CORE volunteers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — were tortured and murdered in nearby Neshoba County by members of the Ku Klux Klan.) The restored structure houses photographs, artifacts and exhibitions documenting its importance to the community and to the movement itself. The museum is open Monday through Friday by appointment only.
