Civil Rights Trail: Atlanta, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham and Memphis

1. Day 1: Arrive in Atlanta

   Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to your hotel downtown

   • Drive about 20 min
   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Atlanta
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), about 16 km south of downtown, where a driver meets you in arrivals for the ride to the hotel. Plan to land by about 3 pm; the group meets at 5:30 pm, and late arrivals are met and brought to dinner. Your See Sight Tours guide runs through the week ahead: three states and six places, the order of the museums and the two days that carry the hardest history. People come on this trip for different reasons, some with family stories of their own, and the guide explains how the days are paced so there is always room to step out, sit down or talk it over. Then we walk to a welcome dinner nearby. Atlanta is on Eastern time; from day 3 we are in Alabama and Tennessee on Central time, an hour behind, and the guide reminds you when we cross the state line.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Welcome dinner

   Free time: Free until the 5:30 pm meeting

   Activity: Plan to land by about 3 pm.

2. Day 2: Sweet Auburn and the Center for Civil and Human Rights

   Auburn Avenue and the King National Historical Park, then the National Center for Civil and Human Rights

   • Drive about 15 min
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Atlanta
   Day 2 details

   We start at 9 am on Auburn Avenue, the Sweet Auburn district where Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929, and which in the first half of the twentieth century was one of the most prosperous Black business streets in the country. The National Park Service visitor centre sets the scene. Then we walk to the house where he was born, seen from outside or with a ranger where tours are running, past Fire Station No. 6 to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he was baptised and where he and his father preached. Across the street at The King Center, Dr. King and Coretta Scott King lie in a tomb set in a reflecting pool beside an eternal flame. Lunch is at a local restaurant on or near the avenue. In the afternoon we drive ten minutes to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights beside Centennial Olympic Park, which links the American movement to human rights struggles around the world; many people find its lunch-counter exhibit hard to sit through. Allow about two hours. The evening is free.

   Included

   • Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park with your guide: the visitor centre, the King birth home (outside, or a ranger tour where running), Fire Station No. 6 and Ebenezer Baptist Church
   • The King Center and the tomb of Dr. and Mrs. King
   • Lunch on Sweet Auburn
   • National Center for Civil and Human Rights

   Easier option: Rest at the hotel after lunch and visit the Center for Civil and Human Rights for an hour later in the afternoon, or skip it.

   More active option: In the free evening, walk or cycle the Atlanta BeltLine Eastside Trail, which passes close to the Old Fourth Ward where Sweet Auburn begins.

   Free time: Evening free in Atlanta

   Activity: About 3 km on foot in the morning on pavements, then two hours standing in the museum.

3. Day 3: Tuskegee, then the Rosa Parks Museum

   Atlanta to Tuskegee on Interstate 85, then Montgomery

   • Drive about 3 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Montgomery
   Day 3 details

   We leave Atlanta at about 8:30 am and drive southwest on Interstate 85 into Alabama, about 200 km and two and a quarter hours, setting watches back an hour at the state line. In Tuskegee we spend the late morning at two National Park Service sites: Tuskegee Institute, the school Booker T. Washington led from its founding in 1881, with The Oaks, his home, and the George Washington Carver Museum; and Moton Field, where the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military pilots in the US armed forces, trained during the Second World War. Lunch is in Tuskegee or nearby Auburn, then it is under an hour to Montgomery. In the early afternoon we visit the Rosa Parks Museum, built by Troy University on the corner where she was arrested on 1 December 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, and which tells the story of the 381-day boycott that followed. Afterwards your guide walks the group from Court Square up Dexter Avenue to the steps of the Alabama State Capitol, where the Selma to Montgomery march ended in 1965. The evening is free.

   Included

   • Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site: The Oaks and the George Washington Carver Museum
   • Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field
   • Lunch in Tuskegee or Auburn
   • Rosa Parks Museum
   • A walk up Dexter Avenue to the Alabama State Capitol with your guide

   Free time: Evening free in Montgomery

   Activity: Two drives of about two and a quarter hours and 45 minutes, with short walks at Tuskegee and an hour in the Rosa Parks Museum.

   

4. Day 4: Dexter Avenue, the Legacy Museum and the Memorial

   A day in Montgomery: Dexter Avenue church and parsonage, the Legacy Museum, then the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

   • Drive about 15 min
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Montgomery
   Day 4 details

   This is the heaviest day of the trip, and we pace it that way. In the morning, at the time the church gives us when we book the group visit, we tour Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, a block from the Capitol, where Dr. King was pastor from 1954 to 1960 and where local leaders met to plan the bus boycott. Then the Dexter Parsonage Museum, the King family's home, whose porch was bombed in January 1956 while Coretta Scott King and their baby daughter were inside. Lunch together downtown. In the early afternoon we go to the Legacy Museum of the Equal Justice Initiative, on the site of a warehouse where enslaved people were held, which traces a line from slavery through lynching and segregation to mass incarceration. Give it about three hours; photography is not allowed inside. Then the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, where more than 800 steel monuments, one for each county where racial terror lynchings were documented, hang above the walkway. We go in the late-afternoon light and leave the pace to you. Dinner together is quiet and unhurried, a chance to talk the day over, or not.

   Included

   • Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church tour (a group visit booked with the church)
   • Dexter Parsonage Museum
   • Lunch in downtown Montgomery
   • The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
   • National Memorial for Peace and Justice
   • Dinner together

   Optional experiences

   • Freedom Monument Sculpture Park (Equal Justice Initiative), where time and opening days allow
   • Civil Rights Memorial Center

   Easier option: Go back to the hotel after the Legacy Museum to rest, and visit the Memorial with your guide the next morning before we leave for Selma.

   Free time: An hour free between the museum and the Memorial

   Activity: About three hours on your feet in the Legacy Museum and an hour at the Memorial, on paths with a gentle slope. The content is hard; step out whenever you need to.

5. Day 5: Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge

   Montgomery west on US 80 to the Lowndes Interpretive Center and Selma, then north to Birmingham

   • Drive about 3 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Birmingham
   Day 5 details

   We leave Montgomery at 8:30 am and drive west on US 80, the route of the 1965 march and now the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, travelling it in reverse. About 40 minutes out, the Lowndes Interpretive Center tells the story of the marchers' camps along the road and of the tent city where Black sharecropping families, evicted for registering to vote, lived through the months that followed. In Selma we meet a local guide from the community and start at Brown Chapel AME Church, where the marchers gathered on 7 March 1965, then follow their route through town to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We cross it on foot, as they did before state troopers attacked them on the far side on what became known as Bloody Sunday. At the foot of the bridge, the community-run National Voting Rights Museum, opened for our group by appointment, keeps the marchers' own stories. Lunch is in Selma. Mid-afternoon we drive north about two hours to Birmingham, check in by about 5:30 pm and have dinner together.

   Included

   • Drive along the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail with your guide
   • Lowndes Interpretive Center
   • A walk through Selma with a local guide: Brown Chapel AME Church and the march route
   • Walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge
   • National Voting Rights Museum
   • Lunch in Selma
   • Dinner in Birmingham

   Easier option: Ride across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the vehicle and meet the group on the far side.

   Activity: About 3 km on foot in Selma, including the bridge, which rises over the Alabama River; drives of 40 minutes, 45 minutes and two hours.

6. Day 6: Birmingham, then west to Memphis

   Birmingham Civil Rights District, then Interstate 22 by way of Tupelo to Memphis

   • Drive about 4 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Memphis
   Day 6 details

   Birmingham in the morning, Memphis by evening. We start in Kelly Ingram Park, where in May 1963 police turned dogs and fire hoses on the children and teenagers of the Children's Crusade; sculptures along its paths show what happened. Across the street stands the 16th Street Baptist Church, where a Klan bomb killed four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair, on 15 September 1963. A church guide tells its story, and we keep the order of the morning to the church's tour times. Then the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on the corner, where we spend about two hours. These blocks are now the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. After lunch nearby we leave at about 1:30 pm for Memphis, about 385 km and three and three-quarter hours on Interstate 22 through northwest Alabama and Mississippi, with a 30-minute break in Tupelo, where Elvis Presley was born. We reach Memphis by about 5:45 pm. The evening is free, and Beale Street is a short walk from the hotel.

   Included

   • Kelly Ingram Park with your guide
   • 16th Street Baptist Church tour
   • Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
   • Lunch in Birmingham
   • Drive to Memphis with a 30-minute break in Tupelo

   Free time: Evening free in Memphis

   Activity: About three hours on foot in the morning, then an afternoon on the road in two legs of about two hours with a 30-minute break.

   

7. Day 7: The Lorraine Motel and Stax

   National Civil Rights Museum, Clayborn Temple and Mason Temple, then the Stax Museum in Soulsville

   • Drive about 20 min
   • Breakfast and dinner
   • Stay in Memphis
   Day 7 details

   The National Civil Rights Museum opens at 9 am and we are there for it. It is built around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was shot on the balcony outside Room 306 on 4 April 1968, and its galleries run from slavery and resistance through the boycotts, sit-ins and Freedom Rides to the sanitation workers' strike that brought him to Memphis; across the street, the Legacy Building follows the investigation of his killing. Allow about three hours. After a week on the trail much of it will be familiar, and here it comes together. Lunch is your choice nearby. In the early afternoon your guide takes us past Clayborn Temple, where the striking sanitation workers set off with their I AM A MAN signs, and past Mason Temple, a working church busy with Sunday services, where Dr. King gave his last speech the night before he died. Then the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Soulsville, on the site of the studio where Black and white musicians recorded together in a segregated city. Farewell dinner in the evening.

   Included

   • National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, with the Legacy Building
   • Clayborn Temple and I AM A MAN Plaza with your guide
   • Mason Temple (outside)
   • Stax Museum of American Soul Music
   • Farewell dinner

   Optional experiences

   • Live blues on Beale Street
   • Sun Studio tour

   Easier option: Skip the afternoon and rest at the hotel; the museum is within walking distance of downtown.

   More active option: In the late afternoon, walk the Big River Crossing, a path on the Harahan Bridge, across the Mississippi into Arkansas and back.

   Free time: Lunch free; an hour free before dinner

   Activity: About three hours standing and walking in the museum, with benches along the way, then an hour at Stax.

   

8. Day 8: Graceland and home

   Downtown Memphis to Graceland in Whitehaven, then Memphis International Airport (MEM)

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Breakfast
   Day 8 details

   Check out after breakfast. Graceland lies about 10 km from Memphis International Airport, so the trip ends there: we take the first entry of the morning, at about 9 am, for the mansion tour. Elvis bought the house in 1957 at the age of 22, and the rooms are kept as they were in the 1970s, from the white living room with its peacock stained glass to the Jungle Room. The tour ends in the Meditation Garden, where he and his parents are buried. It is a lighter last morning after a week of hard history, and a reminder of how much American music grew out of the same streets. By about 11:30 am our driver takes you to Memphis International Airport (MEM), and your guide sees the group to departures and checks your flight. Book a flight leaving after about 1:30 pm. If yours leaves earlier, we arrange the transfer from the hotel at the time you need and you skip Graceland. Extra nights in Memphis can be added on request.

   Included

   • Graceland mansion tour at the first entry of the day
   • Drop-off at Memphis International Airport (MEM)

   Optional experiences

   • Extra nights in Memphis, booked on request

   Activity: About an hour and a half on foot at Graceland. Book a flight leaving after about 1:30 pm.

   

Wildlife and weather: Spring and autumn bring warm, mostly dry days that suit the outdoor sites: the Memorial, the Pettus Bridge and Kelly Ingram Park. From June to September it is hot and humid, so outdoor visits move to the early morning; spring storms can bring heavy rain for an afternoon.

• Atlanta2 nights
• Montgomery2 nights
• Birmingham1 night
• Memphis2 nights