Montgomery

On December 1, 1955, the seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger – a moment that changed American history. A trip to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, takes you to the sites of the civil rights movement and to memorials that rank among the most powerful in the United States.

From the Confederacy to the Bus Boycott

Montgomery sits on the Alabama River and became the state capital in 1846. In 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in here as president of the Confederate States, and the city briefly served as the Confederacy's first capital. Almost a hundred years later, the bus boycott that followed the arrest of Rosa Parks launched the modern civil rights movement; a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. became its spokesman. In 1965, the march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights ended in front of the Capitol. The 381-day boycott led to the desegregation of the city's buses.

Sights in Montgomery

The Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial for Peace and Justice commemorates the thousands of victims of racial terror lynchings with hanging steel monoliths, one for each affected county. The accompanying Legacy Museum, housed in a former warehouse where enslaved people were once held, traces the arc from slavery to mass incarceration. The Rosa Parks Museum stands on the site of her arrest. The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where King preached, and the Dexter Parsonage Museum, his former home, are located near the Alabama State Capitol. The Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial is a black granite fountain designed by Maya Lin. If you're interested in literature, visit the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum.

Eating and Going Out in Montgomery

The cuisine is traditional Southern: fried chicken, barbecue, biscuits, fried green tomatoes, collard greens, and peach cobbler. Many restaurants serve meat-and-three, a meat dish with three sides of your choice. Riverfront Park, with its amphitheater, lies along the river, and nearby the Montgomery Biscuits play minor league baseball in a converted railroad shed. The Alley, a nightlife district in Downtown with bars and restaurants, is a popular gathering spot in the evening.

Music and Literature in Montgomery

Montgomery was the home of Hank Williams, and you can visit his museum and grave here. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Blount Cultural Park is one of the major Shakespeare stages in the United States, and in the same park the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts shows American art.

Getting Around Montgomery and the Best Time to Visit

Montgomery Regional Airport has a few connections to hub airports; Atlanta and Birmingham are two hours and an hour and a half away by car, respectively. The sights in Downtown are easy to reach on foot, but you'll need a car for excursions. The best times to visit are spring and fall; summer is hot and humid. One important excursion leads to Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of "Bloody Sunday" in 1965, along the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. Tuskegee, home to Booker T. Washington's university and the Tuskegee Airmen museum, is also reachable in just under an hour.