MONTGOMERY, Ala., Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Alabama is looking to spotlight the state's role in the civil rights struggle as the first U.S. African American president prepares to take office in January.
Stateline.org reported Wednesday that although Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee also have begun to celebrate their civil rights past, Alabama is considered the epicenter of the civil rights movement.
"Ten years ago in Alabama, blacks and whites had just started to socialize together. Now we're beginning to do the hard work of talking about the way things were back then and why they were that way," said Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Library & Museum in Montgomery. "This museum was designed to promote that kind of dialogue."
Alabama is home to the 54-mile Selma march route, and the first civil rights memorial in the country was established here in 1989 by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Tourists also visit the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached and organized the Montgomery bus boycott.
The Black Belt Action Committee is asking Congress to designate several sites in the region as National Heritage Areas.
"With heritage areas, we're not looking for a Disney World experience. We want people to come into communities and see them as they are. Then we expect locals will open bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants," said Tina Jones of the University of West Alabama, who leads the group.
