Black History Month: A look at places to visit year round.

by Jamie Rhein on

Black History month sped by this year. In my mind, a history month merely indicates those places that should be on our radar year around. Here are several places and events we’ve covered in the past. Hopefully in your travels between now and next February, you’ll be able to head to one or two of them. As I read through the posts, the scope of African American history in the U.S. struck me. I knew that before, but it’s good to review the vastness, and how African American history is such an important part of the U.S. fabric that ties the country together in such a unique, diverse way.

To see more than one significant site, take an African-American heritage tour. This post lists several. The photo is of the painting “Neighborhood” by African American artist Jacob Lawrence who created a series of paintings on the Great Migration–the movement of African Americans to northern cities. The paintings are part of the collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

African-American heritage tours

by Jamie Rhein on

With Leap Year we get an extra day for Black History Month. Even so, February is not enough to highlight all the places one might go to find out about African-American contributions. With just a few hours left, here are several tours designed to provide a scope of African-American history and culture. You don’t need to wait until next February–these are any time of year offerings.

In Washington, D.C., the company, Sightseeing Tours–The African American Tour specialists has three walking tour options: Walking in the Footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. Tour; Duke Ellington’s Jazz Tour; and the Historical Educational Tour of U Street. U Street was the heart of the African American community from 1920-1950. The photo is of the Duke Ellington Mural on U Street. The company also has bus tours. The African American Heritage and Culture tour covers 200 years of history.

The African-American Heritage Tour in Durham, North Carolina includes North Carolina Central University, the first public liberal arts school for African-Americans and Stagville, a former plantation that is now a center for study about African-American life during slavery.

For a do-it-yourself itinerary of African-American sites in Mississippi, here are some suggestions. One place to stop is the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson. Here’s a place to learn about the “work, lifestyle and contributions of African Americans. One of them is Richard Wright who wrote the book Native Son.

The Quest for Freedom, Living History Tour in Columbia, Pennsylvania covers includes stops on the Underground Railroad.

In Savannah, Georgia, the African Influence Tour includes slavery, Gullah culture, Underground Railroad landmarks and the oldest African-American Baptist church in the United States.

The African-American Heritage tour in Detroit, Michigan has a menu of three tour options that encompass the scope of historical sites and landmarks.

The Black Heritage Trail tours in Boston, Massachusetts are offered by the Museum of African American History and cover the 19th century African-American community in this city.

What I’ve listed here are not all of the African-American Heritage tours by a long shot, but they are a place to start.

Washington’s birthday–a virtual tour of Mt. Vernon

by Jamie Rhein on

Earlier this week I headed to Mt. Vernon. Not physically, but via Mt. Vernon’s Web site. I see lots and lots and lots of Web sites. Web site hopping is a great way to pass writing time. Mt. Vernon’s Web site is the Rolls Royce of sites. There is so much material that it’s easy to get lost in the wandering.

Details range from the reconstruction of a slave cabin to how to make Martha Washington’s Great Cake to every detail about George Washington’s house and gardens and his life, including before and after his presidency. In each section there are links that lead to more details. For example, when you go to the house and garden link there are other links to specific buildings. Each building has other links to more information. If you head to the Virtual Mansion Tour, you’ll find links to specific rooms in the main house. Each room of the house has more links. In the Large Dining Room, you can find out about the molding, the artwork, the furniture and the room’s purpose.

If you can’t make it to Mt. Vernon in person, spend some time at the Web site and you’ll think that you spent a week there. Besides that, you’ll know more about 17th and 18th century life in the U.S. than most people do. Did you know the Great Cake takes 40 eggs? I do now.

Each month there are special events. For Black History Month programs center around the contributions of the slaves who lived at Mt. Vernon and the lives they led. Here’s the page that details the history of slavery where George Washington was concerned.

World Heritage Site new “Tentative List”: Places to Love: Civil Rights Movement Sites

by Jamie Rhein on

For the Gadling series “World Heritage Site new “Tentative List”: Places to Love” we are covering the 14 sites that have been submitted for possible inclusion as an official World Heritage Site in the United States. The sites will not be posted in order of importance or in the order they appear on the list.

Number 1

Name of site: Civil Rights Movement Sites

Location: Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama.

Reason for importance (in a nutshell): Three churches, Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery and the Bethel Baptist and 16th Street Baptist Churches in Birmingham, all historically African-American, played significant roles during the Civil Rights Movement.

Jamie’s Take: Of all the places on the new Tentative Sites list, these are perhaps the most humble and each hold enormous significance to American history. During Black History month, this is a fitting time to pay tribute. Here’s why:

Picture Martin Luther King Jr. standing at the simple pulpit of what was then called Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. From 1954 to1960, he was the pastor of this church, preaching his message that pulled people into a movement that changed history. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized from here. The church today looks similar to what it did back then–even the pulpit is still there.

In Birmingham on September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Hatred killed four girls while they were putting on their choir robes. Members of the Klu Klux Klan were responsible. The bombing played a large role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The church, in the heart of the Civil Rights District of Birmingham, still operates as a church today. In 1873, when it was founded, it was the first African American church to in Birmingham.

From 1956-1961, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) was headquartered at the Bethel Baptist Church. The early Civil Rights movement efforts were organized here, including the Freedom Ride bus trip that helped lead to the desegregation of bus transportation. This church was bombed several times and is now a National Historic Landmark.

Langston Hughes: Poetry inspired by travel

by Jamie Rhein on

When Langston Hughes’s dad moved to Mexico when Langston was a child, he created the path to the poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” In 1920, while crossing the Mississipi River on a train on his way to Mexico to visit his dad, Langston was inspired to write the poem on the back of a letter. He had just finished high school.

In honor of Black History month, the inspiration gathered from world travel and Langston Hughes, whose poetry still inspires, here’s a short video of him talking about this trip and writing the poem. Plus, he reads it at the end. See what images of your own trips are conjured up. This is a lesson in always having a scrap of paper and a pen or a pencil with you when you travel.