HISTORY’S CIVIL RIGHTS NETWORK
Chattanoogans interested in history and heritage are fortunate to be relatively close to the sites of significant events in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
In the United States, perhaps especially in the South, civil rights history is American history. Those who lived through the time — either from experiencing it or observing it — understand the injustices that had become ingrained, the struggle that occurred and the freedoms that were gained.
Those who didn’t live through it, if for nothing more than to understand a relatively recent issue in our country’s past and its significant players and signposts, should appreciate the war that was fought and the battles that were won.
Two hours south, in Atlanta, for instance, are the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, which includes several buildings surrounding the civil rights leader’s boyhood home, and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King delivered his first sermon and later served as a co-pastor with his father.
Slightly farther southwest, in Birmingham, among other places, are Kelly Ingram Park, where fire hoses were turned on and dogs loosed on black protesters by Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor in 1963, and the 16th Street Baptist Church, where on Sept. 16, 1963, white supremacists placed a bomb that killed four young black girls attending Sunday school.
In the southwestern part of Tennessee, in Memphis, are Mason Temple, the Church of God in Christ sanctuary where King gave his last speech, and the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated 49 years ago this week.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., co-sponsored bipartisan legislation that would establish the African American Civil Rights Network that would create a national network facilitated by the National Park Service of existing federal, state, local and privately owned sites found to be significant to the civil rights struggle.
The legislation would allow the National Park Service to form partnerships with the existing sites in order to provide technical assistance in the preservation and interpretation of the movement.
While we sometimes worry the park service is accumulating too many sites, geographic areas and movements that will cause it to be a bloated bureaucracy but be spread too thin with an ever-decreasing amount of federal funds for the parks themselves, we nevertheless believe the service traditionally does a tremendous job in preserving the past and bringing history to life.
What all might be included in such a network is unclear, but the sites in Atlanta, Birmingham and Memphis surely are linked in history. Alexander, in a news release announcing the legislation, mentioned the two in Memphis.
Mason Temple, the largest church building owned by a predominantly black Christian denomination in the U.S. when it was completed in 1941, was the location where King, on April 3, 1968, seemed to forecast his death, which would occur the next day.
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now,” he said at the end of a speech about the then-ongoing strike by Memphis sanitation workers. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live — a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
The Lorraine Motel — also called the Lorraine Hotel — is now the headquarters of the National Civil Rights Museum, but Room 306, outside of which King was killed by a bullet from a Remington rifle fired by James Earl Ray from a flophouse across the parking lot, looks similar to how it did then with its colorful accents and its metal railings.
Although the Bessie Smith Cultural Center contains artifacts of Chattanooga’s civil rights history, the city has little to mark that era, which included sit-ins at downtown lunch counters, at least one crowd dispersed by hoses and various other protests, so the city’s likelihood of inclusion in any National Park Service network is unclear.
Still, the linking of such sites in the Southeast and across the country, can only be instructive for citizens today. After all, where history and heritage are concerned, it’s always difficult to understand where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.