April 4, 1968, was a dark day for Tennessee. On that evening Martin Luther King Jr., the best-known Civil Rights leader of all-time, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. It was, in many ways, the culmination of a movement that, during the 1950s and 1960s, turned the United States from a completely segregated society into a mostly integrated one. Life in Tennessee is nothing like it was before the Civil Rights Movement.
The 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man is considered to be the spark that ignited the modern Civil Rights Movement. The National Civil Rights Museum contains a Montgomery bus from that era identical to the one on which this occurred. On that bus, which visitors are free to walk on, you will find a statue of Rosa Parks.
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After King's murder, the Lorraine Motel declined because many people no longer wanted to stay there. Eventually the motel was closed, and for several years it looked as if it would be torn down. But in the early 1980s activists in Memphis began promoting the idea of converting the building into a civil rights museum. In 1991 the National Civil Rights Museum opened to the public; today it is one of the most fascinating places to visit in the state. There are many exhibits that teach about the Civil Rights Movement in ways that are interactive and help you understand just how important the sacrifices of those like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were to who we became and are becoming as a nation.
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