Civil Rights Memorial

Our final stop in Montgomery was at the Civil Rights Memorial. This is a memorial to 40 persons who died in the struggle for equal rights in the US.  It is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The 40 memorialized died between the 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education decision and the 1968 assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The monument was designed by Maya Lin, the designer of the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, D.C. The design was inspired by Dr. King’s famous paraphrase, “we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. ...” from his I Have A Dream speech.

Civil Rights Memorial

The fountain lists the names of the  40 persons who died in the struggle for equal rights in the US between the 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education decision and the 1968 assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Path to the Civil Rights Memorial Center

 The Southern Poverty Law Center is in the background. 

Building that Houses the Civil Right Memorial

On one wall each of the 40 people who died have their picture displayed and their story is told.  If you ever want to be clued into the inhumanity of mankind, this center will fill you in.  I got the same feeling here as I did when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.   The horror that is inflicted because some people think they are better than other people is just is unbelievable and something that never fails to astound me.  I pray that some day this senseless violence and hatred ends.

When we left the Civil Rights Memorial and drove past a home firebombed in 1956 when Rev. King and his family lived there before heading back to our campsite in southwestern Montgomery.