
The church was founded in 1877 in a slave trader’s pen, and it was from here that Dr King planned the bus boycott and other protests to end segregation. There’s also the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr King served as a pastor from 19. There are several unmissable civil rights attractions, like the Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University ( Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white man here in 1955), The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and The Civil Rights Memorial Centre. NHP //Dr King had an enormous impact on the segregated capital of Alabama during the 1950s. Montgomery, AlabamaĪ post shared by Martin Luther King, Jr. It opened in 1946 and serves Southern soul food like fried chicken and lemon meringue pie, said to be Dr King’s favourite.ĮXPERIENCE IT FOR YOURSELF: Tastes and Sounds of the South 4. You can also break bread in the same place as Dr King at The Four Way restaurant. It’s here that you can learn about America’s civil rights history and see the room where this great man spent his final hours. Everything inside is still as it was in the 1960s, from the authentic furnishings to the vintage vehicles parked in front. The Lorraine Motel is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum. was standing on the balcony of room 306 when he was shot and killed. gave his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech to a massive crowd at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple. He and his group booked rooms at the Lorraine Motel, marketed as a safe and upscale hotel for black travellers during the Jim Crow era. Memphis, Tennesseeĭr King came to Memphis in April 1968, to prepare for a march to support the city’s striking sanitation workers. You can attend services each Sunday and on the second Sunday of April each year, the church sponsors a speech contest in memory of the Elks’ competition. Today, the First African Baptist Church, founded in 1867, is the oldest black church in Dublin. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life,” Dr King told Alex Haley in a 1965 Playboy interview. “So we stood up in the aisle for the 90 miles to Atlanta. But as Dr King and his teacher travelled on the bus back to Atlanta that night, the driver forced them to give up their seats to white passengers. He was just 15 when he gave that speech, titled “The Negro and the Constitution” as part of an oratorical essay contest that the Elks had sponsored – and he won.

You can also see the First African Baptist Church where Dr King gave this speech at the Colored Elks Clubs of Georgia’s state convention on 17 April 1944. Here you can see the Atlanta artist Corey Barksdale’s incredible mural and Freedom Ascension sculpture and hear Martin Luther King’s first public speech.

Take a two hour drive from Atlanta to Dublin in Georgia, and you’ll find the Martin Luther King, Jr.
