Southern states announce civil rights trail on MLK Day

Fourteen states announced a joint effort today to preserve sites important in the civil rights movement. The U.S. Civil Rights Trail links 130 attractions across the South, from the place where lynching victim Emmett Till was found dead near Glendora, Miss., to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Many states have promoted their landmarks individually over the years, but the trail is the first single push to get visitors to take in civil rights history as a whole across state lines. “If someone is going to Montgomery and Selma, [Ala.], we want them to go to Jackson, Miss., to learn about the story there and go to the Mississippi Delta and then to Memphis,” said Lee Sentell, a leader of the effort. Ceremonies to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. are underway across the country today, including a speech by the civil rights icon’s daughter, Bernice King, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.