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U.S. Civil Rights Trail Adds Six Major Sites in Florida and Alabama
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U.S. Civil Rights Trail Adds
Six Major Sites in Florida and Alabama
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Civil Rights Memorial Sites Remember Activists, Lynchings and Struggles
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Atlanta, GA – January 2019 / Newsmaker Alert / Five historic civil rights sites in Florida and a national memorial that honors victims of lynching in the South were added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, on the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday, officials announced. The Florida landmarks are in St. Augustine, Sarasota, Mims, Vero Beach, and Panama City, while The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is in Montgomery, Ala.

The Florida listings range from the sites where racial activists staged “wade-ins” at segregated beaches and where baseball great Jackie Robinson trained among white teammates to the home of husband and wife educators who were murdered for their attempts to end white supremacy.

The new sites were announced by the U.S. Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance, comprised of fourteen state tourism departments and Destination DC, along with leaders from the US National Park Service and historians. In 2018, the Marketing Alliance formed and launched CivilRightsTrail.com with approximately 120 sites between Topeka, Kansas., and Washington D.C. as places where tourists can learn details of major events that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The trail received international recognition from publications and travel organizations in its inaugural year. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Guardian newspaper, Rough Guides based in London, NBC News, and the BBC among others, heralded the campaign to spotlight places that recognize landmarks of the era. The current issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine devotes 12 pages to the trail. Even before the Equal Justice Initiative opened its memorial in 2018, it was heralded by The New York Times as one of 52 places in the world to visit.

Kristen Branscum, Commissioner, Kentucky Tourism and current chairman of the US Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance welcomed Visit Florida to the Alliance in late 2018, and the announcement of additional Florida locations couldn’t have come at a better time. “Our evaluation committee was blown away by the historic events that took place in Florida, and we are so pleased to have the platform to shine a light on these sites.”

Although few sites survey visitors, many credit the trail with increased attendance. The International Civil Rights Institute and Museum in Greensboro, N.C., benefited when Time magazine upgraded a purchased ad for the museum to the inside front cover, said Alabama’s Lee Sentell, who was instrumental in organizing the Marketing Alliance. The Washington Post ran a full-page article on the Farmville, Va., school where a 16-year-old student pioneered a strike in 1951. The New York Times profiled lesser-known instances of racial strife in Kansas and Missouri in a three-page spread in its travel section.

“Wade-ins” at Butler Beach and other protests for equality in St. Augustine in June 1964 captured the attention of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, and others. The events likely hurried passage of major civil rights legislation. Young led a peaceful protest from the Lincolnville neighborhood to the Plaza de la Constitution on June 9, he and other marchers were brutally beaten. After black and white protesters jumped into a swimming pool at the Monsoon Motor Lodge on June 18, the manager famously poured acid into the water and police arrested the swimmers. The media coverage of the pool episode helped end an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate, and Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 desegregating public accommodations the next day.

Years later, Young’s shoes were used to cast footprints in concrete at the intersection of St. George and King streets to memorialize the struggle. Four life-size statues anchor the Foot Soldiers Monument. The Accord Freedom Trail in the Lincolnville neighborhood features dozens of historic markers linked to cell phone audio stories. Accord operates a civil rights museum on Bridge Street in the former office of dentist Dr. Robert Hayling where protests were organized. Today the bayfront motor lodge has been replaced by a Hilton, but the steps where King spoke and was arrested have been preserved near a metal plaque.

In the 1950s, with less than two miles of Florida’s extensive shoreline open to blacks, Sarasota pharmacist Neil Humphrey Sr. organized “beach wade-ins” at Lido Beach that drew national media coverage. Despite later protests, it wasn’t until the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 that Florida beaches were integrated. The non-profit Newtown Alive offers guided tours of its African American Heritage Trail with more than a dozen colorful historic markers.

In the 1930s, black educators Harry and Harriette Moore organized Florida's first local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and campaigned fearlessly for change. Klansmen murdered the couple on Christmas night of 1951 when a bomb exploded under their home. Despite repeated investigations into their deaths, no one was prosecuted, although suspects were identified. The Moores are honored with a memorial park and museum in Mims.

Historic Dodgertown at Vero Beach is remembered for its connections to baseball legend Jackie Robinson. A year after being elected Rookie of the Year, the Brooklyn Dodger homered in the first inning of the first spring training game played at a former naval base. Hundreds of cheering African Americans were segregated in left field to witness his athletic talent. As the Dodgers added more blacks to the roster where blacks and whites mingled on and off the field, it was regarded “as the first crack in the wall of prejudice.” This 80-acre property today displays photos, baseball cards and a bat signed bythe Robinson. Annual celebrations and a charity game are held on April 15th, every year, commemorating the anniversary of the historic day in 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball.

A historic marker at the Bay County Courthouse in Panama City commemorates the 1963 Gideon v. Wainwright decision regarding a defendant's right to legal representation. Clarence Earl Gideon appealed to the high court after he was forced to represent himself for burglarizing a pool hall and was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states are required under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution to provide an attorney to defendants in criminal cases who are unable to afford their own attorney.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a park-like memorial to honor the black victims of 4,400 lynchings in 800 U.S. counties from 1877 through 1950, opened in April and brought in more than 100,000 visitors during its first three months. EJI also opened The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which focuses on the continued effects of discrimination against America’s black population.

EJI founder attorney Bryan Stevenson, one of Time magazine’s 2015 Most Influential People, said the Legacy Museum and the nearby National Memorial for Peace and Justice were inspired by the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. The New York Times headline said, “The country has never seen anything like it.” While the traditional indoor museum contains photographs and reprints of media coverage, the outdoor memorial features 800 massive weathered-steel columns etched with names of the victims suspended over the heads of visitors. Actor Michael B. Jordan will portray Stevenson in the motion picture based on his bestseller “Just Mercy,” which is due in theaters next January.

About the U.S. Civil Rights Trail
The U.S. Civil Rights Trail is a collection of churches, courthouses, schools, museums and other landmarks primarily in the Southern states where activists challenged segregation in the 1950s and 1960s to advance social justice. Famous sites such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas; the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s where sitins began; the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; and Dr. King’s birthplace in Atlanta, to name a few. The people, locations and destinations included in the Civil Rights Trail provide a way for families, travelers, and educators to experience history firsthand and tell the story of how “what happened here changed the world.” For details about dozens of significant sites and to see interviews with civil rights foot soldiers, visit CivilRightsTrail.com.

About the U.S. Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance
A project which began in 2015 to nominate a few Civil Rights landmarks as potential UNESCO World Heritage Sites uncovered more than 100 NPS, National Historic Landmarks, and other highly qualified and recommended sites for consideration to UNESCO. By March of 2017, it was obvious, that while this working group had the first ever inventory of important civil rights locations, it was not necessarily a list that was inclusive of all of the destinations that could be a part of an important tourism campaign to focus on sharing the story of freedom. And thus the concept of creating a US Civil Rights Trail was born. Thanks to the leadership of Lee Sentell, Director, Alabama Tourism, fourteen (14) states offices in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia joined together to organize marketing and advertising programming, and created the U.S. Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance, LLC., incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia in October 2017. The website||www.CivilRightsTrail.com, media, and associated marketing outreach is promoted through a licensing agreement with the state of Alabama. Travel South USA, a non-profit marketing organization, serves as the no-fee business office for the Alliance, and the agency of record for the Alliance is Luckie & Company with offices in Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia.

For more information, contact:
Liz Bittner
U.S. Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance, LLC
404-231-1790
Media/Press

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Publishing Dates: 01/22/19 – 03/22/19
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