Pan Africa! The Traveler 2021

Traveling America's Gateway Cities "Where to Go and Are 'We' Welcome" 2021

The South!

Tour Alabama !

Table of Contents

Letter from the Publisher

page 3

Central Florida Association of Black Journalists

page 4

Pan African American Cultural Heritage Initiative

page 5

‘The Traveler’: The History of African American Travel

page 7

Forgotten Communities Program

page 17

‘The Entertainer’: Cultural Heritage Arts - Food - Music

page 19

Pan African American Cultural Heritage Market Place (Coming soon ‘The Store’)

page 31

Feature Article: “Where to GO – 2021/!” ALABAMA

page 35

‘Letter from the Publisher’ Cultural Heritage Tourism and Travel 2021

Welcome to our 2021 Pan African Cultural Heritage Tourism Edition of Pan Africa! Our goal is to share and showcase the Culture and History of the People of Pan Africa in the Tradition of the ‘Green Book’; whom we honor. As a People, our greatest concern, when we travel, is whether we will be welcomed at our destination. Our second concern is - “Where to Go?”

The South is the True Base of African American Culture and Heritage. The South has many undiscovered destinations that have helped shape the culture of mainstream America. The untapped cultural heritage resources lay fallow in the land. It is time to research and rebuild these once proud communities and destinations. It can only be done by those who embrace Cultural Heritage Tourism as a part of their travel, in the hope of finding a unique and memorable experiences.

In this edition, we celebrate Pan African Historical Sites and Businesses in the State of Alabama, by the insertion of our special edition of ‘Pan Africa! Alabama’. Alabama truly is a Beautiful State, with a rich Black History. The sites surrounding the Civil Rights Movement are too many to tell. Many more are still in development. No other state is more important to Black History, than Alabama. Montgomery, Birmingham, Tuskegee, Selma, Mobile and others, create images in our mind and soul, when we hear them mentioned. We celebrate the memories and legacies of all those who sacrificed to make our future brighter, by laying the foundation for our culture, civil rights, and communities.

We urge you to consider the legacy of the Green Book Publisher and his vision to encourage travel to the Cultural Heritage Destinations. Our 2021 edition highlights the history of black travel and highlight the great state of Alabama. Save this edition in your phone and visit and support several of the businesses in the Alabama travel guide. Also, check out the many resources listed for additional information, and tailor your travels accordingly.

Remember, to wear your mask and travel safe by distancing!

Bless YOU! E.Franklin Eugene Franklin Publisher/Chairman Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute

Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute, Inc. is a proud member of the Central Florida Association of Black Journalists and publishes ‘Pan Africa!, under the journalistic umbrella of the Association.

About CFABJ: The Central Florida Association of Black Journalists was originally founded in 1983 as the Black Media Association/Central Florida. Its mission was to form a regional network of professionals to improve skills, share ideas and experiences. Currently CFABJ serves journalists, media and public relations professionals, and student and professors in the communications field in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Brevard, Volusia, and Lake Counties.

The CFABJ are an affiliate chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

The objectives of the CFABJ are as follow:

1. Inform the Central Florida community – placing special emphasis on the area’s Black population about the importance of the mass media as it relates to a resident’s daily life, needs and concerns.

2. Regularly critique reportorial deficiencies in the local media in relation to Black people.

3. Assist the Black community in the usage of the media and to expose print and broadcast media to the need for fair, impartial and adequate coverage of news in the Black community.

4. Improve professional skills among Black journalists and broadcasters and, at the same time, to honor excellence and outstanding achievements in the field.

5. Strengthen ties between whites, Blacks, and other minorities in the mass media, and to provide a support system for fellow Black communicators.

6. Monitor affirmative action and Federal Communications Commission guidelines for equal employment opportunity at Central Florida print and broadcast companies; to serve as an employee advocate when necessary; and to work to increase the numbers of Black journalists in managerial and supervisory positions.

7. Work with high school and college students aspiring toward careers in the media.

8. Act as a resource for journalism teachers and other academic professionals, and to encourage the appointment of Black journalism teachers and professors at local schools and colleges.

9. Network job opportunities throughout the country in general and in the Central Florida area in particular.

"Culture is one of the most important levers to pull in order to rehabilitate and relaunch an economy; It also provides direction.”

Aminata Traorẻ

The Pan African American Cultural Heritage Economic and Community Development Initiative Sharing “Our Cultural Knowledge and Experiences” in the areas of Commerce, Culture, Community, Education, Influence, Knowledge, and Faith; via established business, educational, social and tourism networks. The ultimate goal being to “Rebuild and Connect” the global people of PAN AFRICA, via the technology platforms of the internet and to use proven Cultural Economics and Heritage Tourism programs to develop Forgotten Communities, foster prosperity through business growth and job creation; and to facilitate cultural exchanges and services with other members of the African Diaspora, in partnership with the Pan African Cultural Heritage Alliance.

Our Mission The mission of the National Cultural Heritage Tourism Center, Inc. is to work in partnership with tourism and travel partners to promote and position key cultural heritage tourism destinations through a broad program of advertising, public relations, social media, Internet marketing, promotions, research, and other marketing strategies.

These strategies are designed to maintain and improve the awareness of national and international cultural and historical attractions and to project their image as a must visit destination to cultural and business travelers. The ultimate goal being, to attract increased numbers of travelers, and to increase tourist spending, create jobs, and hospitality related businesses.

The National Cultural Heritage Tourism Center was created to market and promote cultural heritage and tourism destinations of interest to people of African Descent. The Center markets, advertises, and promotes historical communities, major attractions, tourism related businesses, and cultural arts and entertainment venues.

In honor of "The Green Book", information is also provided to serve the unique cultural needs of the Diaspora. The National Cultural Heritage Society and its local community-based affiliates serves as cultural heritage tourism ambassadors, preservationist and educational advocates. The ultimate goal being the preservation of our past and the education of future generations concerning our culture, our heritage, and our traditions, by celebrating via the arts!!

Culture, heritage and the arts have long appealed to tourist and contributed to their selections of tourism destinations. In recent years ‘culture’ has been rediscovered as an important marketing tool to attract travelers with special interests in culture, heritage and the arts.

Cultural heritage tourism is the fastest growing segment of the tourism industry. There is a trend and need for travelers to enrich their lives with new cultural experiences. This is evident in the rise in the volume of tourists who seek their heritage, cultural - related experiences and adventures.

Cultural Community Based Tourism appeals to adventurous people with a passion for learning about local cultures and traditional ways of life. From a community development strategy, cultural community-based tourism uses tourism management as a tool to strengthen and preserve communities with significant historical assets that may be of interest to tourist.

‘THE TRAVELER’

Artist Jean Pugh

CULTURAL HERITAGE TOURISM AND TRAVEL

AFRICA - EUROPE - CARIBBEAN - SOUTH AMERICA – CENTRAL AMERICA - NORTH AMERICA

EXPANDING… CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE THROUGH COMMUNITY-BASED INITIATIVES!

‘The History of African American Travel’

The Negro Motorist Green Book'sauthor, Victor Hugo Green, 1956.

Are We Welcome?

“Now we can travel without embarrassment” The Negro traveler's inconveniences are many and they are increasing because today so many more are traveling, individually and in groups." -Wendell P. Alston The Negro Motorist Green Book was a publication released in 1936 that served as a guide for African-American travelers. Because of the racist conditions that existed from segregation, blacks needed a reference manual to guide them to integrated or black-friendly establishments. That's when they turned to "The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide that was developed by activist Victor Green and distributed by the Esso Standard Oil Company. Originally, the Green Book was created to serve Metropolitan New York. The book however, received such an overwhelming response, it spread throughout the country within one year. The catch phrase was “Now we can travel without embarrassment” The Green Book provided information on local tourist homes, which were private residences, owned by blacks and open to travelers. It was especially helpful to blacks that traveled through sunset towns or towns that publicly stated that blacks had to leave the town by sundown, or it would be cause for arrest. Also listed were hotels, barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants, garages, liquor stores, ball parks and taverns. It also provided a listing of the white-owned, black-friendly locations for accommodations and food.

The publication was free, with a 10-cent cost of shipping. As interest grew, the Green Book solicited salespersons nationwide to build its ad sales. Inside the pages of the Green Book were action photos of the various locations, along with historical and background information for the readers' review. Within the pages of the introduction, the guide states, “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States." The Green Book printed its last copy in 1964 after the passing of the Civil Rights Act.

‘Cultural Heritage Travel’ The Pullman Porters

‘Pullman porters’ were men hired to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars.

Pullman porters served American railroads for 100 years from the late 1860s until late in the 20th Century. Pullman porters, who were largely black, formed the first all-black union. Under the leadership of A. Phillip Randolph, Pullman porters formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

The formation of the union, in 1925, was instrumental in the advancement of the Civil Rights Movement.

Many people credit Pullman porters as significant contributors to the development of America's black tourism and travel; and the subsequent development of the black middle class. In the late 19th century, Pullman porters were among the only people in their communities to travel extensively. Consequently, they became a conduit of new information and ideas from the wider world to their communities. Many Pullman porters supported community projects, including schools, and saved rigorously to ensure that their children were able to obtain an education and thus better employment. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were descendants of Pullman porters. Marshall was also a porter himself, as were Malcolm X and the photojournalist Gordon Parks.

It is not widely known that in the early 1900s, the heyday of luxury travel, the more luxurious trains also had African-American Pullman maids to care for women's needs, especially women with children.

They were expected to assist ladies with their bath, be able to give manicures and dress hair, and assist with children.

According to historian Greg LeRoy, "A Pullman Porter worked 400 hours a month or 11,000 miles, sometimes as much as 20 hours at a stretch. They were expected to arrive at work several hours early to prepare their car, on their own time; they were charged whenever their passengers stole a towel or a water pitcher. On overnight trips, they were allocated only three to four hours of sleep—and that was deducted from their pay. "It didn't pay a livable wage, but they made a living with the tips that they got, because the salary was nothing," says Lyn Hughes of the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum.

The porters were expected to pay for their own meals and uniforms and the company required them to pay for the shoe polish used to shine passengers' shoes daily. There was little job security, and the Pullman Company inspectors were known for suspending porters for trivial reasons.

"One of the most remarkable stories I liked hearing about was how when Jackie Gleason would ride; all the porters wanted to be on that run. The reason why? Not only because he gave every porter $100.00, but it was just the fun, the excitement, the respect that he gave the porters. Instead of their names being George, he called everybody by their first name. He always had like a piano in the car and they sang and danced and had a great time. He was just a fun person to be around.”

‘The Great Migration’

‘The Great Migration ‘was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1910 and 1970. Blacks moved from 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, to the other three cultural regions of the United States. Georgia was especially affected, seeing net declines in its African-American population for three consecutive decades after 1920. Some historians differentiate between a first Great Migration (1910–1930), which saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas to northern industrial cities, and a Second Great Migration (1940–1970), which began after the Great Depression and brought at least 5 million people — including many townspeople with urban skills — to the north and to California and other western states.

By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. More than 80 percent of blacks lived in cities. A bare majority of 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North, and 7 percent in the West. In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote that the Great Migration: was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to [the U.S.]. For blacks, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America, and finding a new one.

The Great Migration drained off much of the rural black population of the South, and for a time, froze or reduced African-American population growth in parts of the region. A number of states witnessed decades of black population decline, especially across the Deep South "black belt" where cotton had been king. The migration changed the demographics of the South. In 1910, African Americans constituted the majority of the population of South Carolina and Mississippi, and more than 40 percent in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas; by 1970, only in Mississippi did the African-American population constitute more than 30 percent of the state's total.

The Great Migration Continued:

"The disappearance of the 'black belt' was one of the striking effects" of the Great Migration, James Gregory wrote. In Mississippi, blacks decreased from about 56% of the population in 1910 to about 37% by 1970, remaining the majority only in some Delta counties. In South Carolina, blacks decreased from about 55% of the population in 1910 to about 30% by 1970.

The growing black presence outside the South changed the dynamics and demographics of numerous cities in the North, Midwest and West. In 1900, only 740,000 African Americans lived outside the South, just 8 percent of the nation's total black population. By 1970, more than 10.6 million African Americans lived outside the South, 47 percent of the nation's total.

Because the migrants concentrated in the big cities of the north and west, their influence was magnified. Cities that had been virtually all white at the start of the century became centers of black culture and politics by mid-century. Informal residential segregation and the tendency of people to settle with others of their home communities led to concentrations of blacks in certain areas. The northern "Black metropolises" developed an important infrastructure of newspapers, businesses, jazz clubs, churches, and political organizations that provided the staging ground for new forms of racial politics and new forms of black culture.

The Great Migration created the first large urban black communities in the North. It is conservatively estimated that 400,000 African Americans left the South in 1916 through 1918 to take advantage of a labor shortage in the wake of the First World War. In 1910, the African-American population of Detroit was 6,000. The Great Migration, plus the immigration from eastern and southern Europe, rapidly turned the city into the country's fourth-largest. By the start of the Great Depression in 1929, the city's African-American population had increased to 120,000. In 1900–01, Chicago had a total population of 1,754,473. By 1920, the city had added more than 1 million residents. During the second wave of the Great Migration (1940–60), the African-American population in the city grew from 278,000 to 813,000.

The flow of African Americans to Ohio, particularly to Cleveland, changed the demographics of the state and its primary industrial city. Before the Great Migration, an estimated 1.1% to 1.6% of Cleveland's population was African American. By 1920, 4.3% of Cleveland's population was African American. The number of African Americans in Cleveland continued to rise over the next 20 years of the Great Migration.

Other northern and mid-western industrial cities, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, and Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Omaha, also had dramatic increases in their African-American populations. By the 1920s, New York's Harlem became a center of black cultural life, influenced by the American migrants as well as new immigrants from the Caribbean area.

Second-tier industrial cities that were destinations for numerous black migrants were Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Columbus, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, and Indianapolis, and smaller industrial cities such as Gary, Dayton, Erie, Toledo, Youngstown, Peoria, Muskegon, Newark, Flint, Saginaw, and Albany. People tended to take the cheapest rail ticket possible and go to areas where they had relatives and friends.

The Great Migration Continued:

For example, many people from Mississippi moved directly north by train to Chicago, from Alabama to Cleveland and Detroit, from Georgia and South Carolina to New York City and Philadelphia, and in the second migration, from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to California.

Since 1965, a reverse migration has gathered strength. Dubbed the New Great Migration, it has seen many blacks move to the “South, generally to states and cities where economic opportunities are the best. The reasons include economic difficulties of cities in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, growth of jobs in the New South" and its lower costs of living, family and kinship ties, and improving racial relations. As early as 1975 to 1980, seven southern states were net black migration gainers. African-American populations have continued to drop throughout much of the Northeast, particularly with black emigration out of the State of New York, as well as out of Northern New Jersey, as they rise in the South.

Educated African Americans were better able to obtain jobs after the Great Migration, eventually gaining a measure of class mobility, but the migrants encountered significant forms of discrimination. Because so many people migrated in a short period of time, the African-American migrants were often resented by the urban European-American working class (often recent immigrants themselves); fearing their ability to negotiate rates of pay or secure employment, the ethnic whites felt threatened by the influx of new labor competition.

Sometimes those who were most fearful or resentful were the last immigrants of the 19th and new immigrants of the 20th century. In many cities, working classes tried to defend what they saw as "their" territories.

African Americans made substantial gains in industrial employment, particularly in the steel, automobile, shipbuilding, and meatpacking industries. Between 1910 and 1920, the number of blacks employed in industry nearly doubled from 500,000 to 901,000. After the Great Depression, more advances took place after workers in the steel and meatpacking industries organized into labor unions in the 1930s and 1940s, under the interracial Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The unions ended the segregation of many jobs, and African Americans began to advance into more skilled jobs and supervisory positions previously informally reserved for whites.

Populations increased so rapidly among both African-American migrants and new European immigrants that there were housing shortages in most major cities. With fewer resources, the newer groups were forced to compete for the oldest, most rundown housing. Ethnic groups created territories which they defended against change. Discrimination often restricted African Americans to crowded neighborhoods. The more established populations of cities tended to move to newer housing as it was developing in the outskirts. Mortgage discrimination and redlining in inner city areas limited the newer African-American migrants' ability to determine their own housing, or obtain a fair price. In the long term, the National Housing Act of 1934 contributed to limiting the availability of loans to urban areas, particularly those areas inhabited by African Americans.

Integration and Segregation White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the Sojourner Truth housing project in Detroit in 1942 erected this derogatory signs and protested. In cities such as Newark, New York and Chicago, African Americans became increasingly integrated into society. As they lived and worked more closely with European Americans, the divide became increasingly indefinite. This period marked the transition for many African Americans from lifestyles as rural farmers to urban industrial workers.

This migration gave birth to a cultural boom in cities, such as, Chicago and New York. In Chicago, for instance, the neighborhood of Bronzeville became known as the "Black Metropolis". From 1924 to 1929, the "Black Metropolis" was at the peak of its golden years.

Many of the community's entrepreneurs were black during this period. "The increase in the number of "backwards" blacks moving into the Black Metropolis was cause for concern in the native community. The foundation of the first African American YMCA took place in Bronzeville, and worked to help incoming migrants find jobs in the city of Chicago. The "Black Belt" geographical and racial isolation of this community, bordered to the north and east by whites, and to the south and west by industrial sites and ethnic immigrant neighborhoods, made it a site for the study of the development of an urban black community.

For urbanized people, eating proper foods in a sanitary, civilized setting, such as, the home or a restaurant was a social ritual that indicated one's level of respectability. The people native to Chicago had pride in the high level of integration in Chicago restaurants, which they attributed to their unassailable manners and refined tastes.

Migrants often encountered residential discrimination, in which white home owners and realtors prevented migrants from purchasing homes or renting apartments in white neighborhoods. In addition, when numerous blacks moved into white neighborhoods, white would quickly relocate out of fear of a potential rise in property crime, rape, drugs and violence that was attributed to neighborhoods with large black populations. These tendencies contributed to maintaining the "racial divide" in the North, perhaps accentuating it. By the late 1950s and 1960s, African Americans were hyper-urban, more densely concentrated in inner cities than other groups.

Since African-American migrants retained many Southern cultural and linguistic traits, such cultural differences created a sense of "otherness" in terms of their reception by others who were already living in the cities. Stereotypes ascribed to black people during this period and ensuing generations often derived from African-American migrants' rural cultural traditions, which were maintained in stark contrast to the urban environments in which the people resided.

The Great Depression of the 1930s resulted in reduced migration because of decreased opportunities. With the defense buildup for World War II, migration was revived, with larger numbers of blacks leaving the South through the 1960s. After the political and civil gains of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), in the 1970s migration began to increase again. It moved in a different direction, as blacks traveled to new regions of the South for economic opportunity.

‘Harlem’

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke.

The Movement also included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest United States affected by the Great Migration (African American), of which Harlem was the largest. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York, in addition, many black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid-1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. Harlem became an AfricanAmerican neighborhood in the early 1900s. In 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African–Americans arrived during the First World War. Due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African–Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and New York.

Despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North. After the end of World War I, many African-American soldiers—who fought in segregated units such as the Harlem Hellfighters came home to a nation whose citizens often did not respect their accomplishments. Race riots and other civil uprisings occurred throughout the U.S. during the Red Summer of 1919, reflecting economic competition over jobs and housing in many cities, as well as tensions over social territories.

‘Harlem’ Continued:

The first stage of the Harlem Renaissance started in the late 1910s. In 1917, the premiere of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre took place. These plays, written by white playwright Ridgely Torrence, featured African-American actors conveying complex human emotions and yearnings. They rejected the stereotypes of the blackface and minstrel show traditions. James Weldon Johnson in 1917 called the premieres of these plays "the most important single event in the entire history of the Negro in the American Theater”. Another landmark came in 1919, when the poet Claude McKay published his militant sonnet, "If We Must Die". Although the poem never alluded to race, African-American readers heard its note of defiance in the face of racism and the nationwide race riots and lynchings, then taking place. By the end of the First World War, the fiction of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude McKay were describing the reality of contemporary African-American life in America.

In 1917 Hubert Harrison, "The Father of Harlem Radicalism", founded the Liberty League and The Voice, the first organization and the first newspaper, respectively, of the "New Negro Movement". Harrison's organization and newspaper were political, but also emphasized the arts (his newspaper had "Poetry for the People" and book review sections). In 1927, in the Pittsburgh Courier, Harrison challenged the notion of the renaissance. He argued that the "Negro Literary Renaissance" notion overlooked the stream of literary and artistic products which had flowed uninterruptedly from Negro writers from 1850 to the present.

The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the changes that had taken place in the AfricanAmerican community since the abolition of slavery, as well as the expansion of communities in the North. These accelerated as a consequence of World War I and the great social and cultural changes in early 20th-century United States. Industrialization was attracting people to cities from rural areas and gave rise to a new mass culture. Contributing factors leading to the Harlem Renaissance were the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities, which concentrated ambitious people in places where they could encourage each other, and the First World War, which had created new industrial work opportunities for tens of thousands of people. Factors leading to the decline of this era include the Great Depression that followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Christianity played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance. Many of the writers and social critics discussed the role of Christianity in African–American lives. For example, a famous poem by Langston Hughes, "Madam and the Minister", reflects the temperature and mood towards religion in the Harlem Renaissance. The cover story for the Crisis Magazine's publication in May 1936 explains how important Christianity was regarding the proposed union of the three largest Methodist churches of 1936. For Blacks, the Church and the arts were a way to prove one’s humanity and demand equality. For a number of Whites, preconceived prejudices were challenged and conquered. Corresponding with the era of the Harlem Renaissance was the beginning of mainstream publishing. The Harlem Renaissance would help lay the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, many Black artists coming into their own careers after this literary movement would take inspiration from it.

‘Cultural Heritage Travel’ The Pullman Porters

‘Pullman porters’ were men hired to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars.

Pullman porters served American railroads for 100 years from the late 1860s until late in the 20th Century. Pullman porters, who were largely black, formed the first all-black union. Under the leadership of A. Phillip Randolph, Pullman porters formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

The formation of the union, in 1925, was instrumental in the advancement of the Civil Rights Movement.

Many people credit Pullman porters as significant contributors to the development of America's black tourism and travel; and the subsequent development of the black middle class. In the late 19th century, Pullman porters were among the only people in their communities to travel extensively. Consequently, they became a conduit of new information and ideas from the wider world to their communities. Many Pullman porters supported community projects, including schools, and saved rigorously to ensure that their children were able to obtain an education and thus better employment. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown were descendants of Pullman porters. Marshall was also a porter himself, as were Malcolm X and the photojournalist Gordon Parks.

It is not widely known that in the early 1900s, the heyday of luxury travel, the more luxurious trains also had African-American Pullman maids to care for women's needs, especially women with children.

They were expected to assist ladies with their bath, be able to give manicures and dress hair, and assist with children.

According to historian Greg LeRoy, "A Pullman Porter worked 400 hours a month or 11,000 miles, sometimes as much as 20 hours at a stretch. They were expected to arrive at work several hours early to prepare their car, on their own time; they were charged whenever their passengers stole a towel or a water pitcher. On overnight trips, they were allocated only three to four hours of sleep—and that was deducted from their pay. "It didn't pay a livable wage, but they made a living with the tips that they got, because the salary was nothing," says Lyn Hughes of the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum.

The porters were expected to pay for their own meals and uniforms and the company required them to pay for the shoe polish used to shine passengers' shoes daily. There was little job security, and the Pullman Company inspectors were known for suspending porters for trivial reasons.

"One of the most remarkable stories I liked hearing about was how when Jackie Gleason would ride; all the porters wanted to be on that run. The reason why? Not only because he gave every porter $100.00, but it was just the fun, the excitement, the respect that he gave the porters. Instead of their names being George, he called everybody by their first name. He always had like a piano in the car and they sang and danced and had a great time. He was just a fun person to be around.”

‘The Historical Black Church’

Picture: Historic Talbot Chapel AME Zion, Pensacola, Florida, Belmont De Villiers Community college – 150 Years since founding

We celebrate all cultural and historic churches over one hundred years old. African American churches have served to provide African American people with leadership positions and opportunities to organize that were denied in mainstream American society.

Because of this, African American pastors became the bridge between the African American and European American communities and thus played a crucial role in the American Civil Rights Movement! Although African American neighborhoods may suffer from civic disinvestment with lower quality schools, less effective policing, and fire protection, there are institutions such as churches and museums and political organizations that help to improve the physical and social capital of African American neighborhoods. In African American neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion. For some African Americans the kind spirituality learned through these churches works as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of racism. Museums devoted to African American History are also found in many African American neighborhoods, and are often located in historical churches.

The History of African American ART – FOOD - MUSIC

‘THE ENTERTAINER’

Artist Jean Pugh

Culture Heritage Arts

THE FLORIDA HIGHWAYMEN The Highwaymen, also referred to as the Florida Highwaymen, are a group of 26 African American landscape artists in Florida, from the mid - 1950’s until the early 1980’s. They were self-taught and worked together, and created a body of work of over 200,000 paintings, despite facing many racial and cultural barriers. The Highwaymen painted landscapes and cultural images and made a living selling them door-to-door, to businesses and individuals, throughout Florida.

The Highwaymen created large numbers of relatively inexpensive landscape paintings using construction materials rather than traditional art supplies. Because of the fact that no art galleries would accept their work, they sold them in towns and cities and along roadsides throughout Florida, often still wet, out of the trunks of their cars. Their success and longevity is remarkable considering they began their career in the racially unsettled and violent times of the 50s in Florida, and amid the social conditions of the Jim Crow South where the stirrings of the civil rights movement were only just beginning. They have been called "The Last Great American Art Movement of the 20th century".

In the 50s and 60s, it was impossible to find galleries interested in selling artworks by a group of unknown, self-taught African Americans. Instead they sold their art directly to the public rather than through galleries and art agents. Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as an important part of American folk history and their fame has grown internationally.

The remaining artists in the original group (8 deceased) continue to paint to this day, more than 50 years since they first started to paint, even though most artists are now in their 70s and some nearing their 80s. Over time their style has evolved into more carefully created works and away from the original "fast painting" techniques that enabled them to produce large quantities of paintings in their early years.

Paintings by the Florida Highwaymen are prized by collectors today, but their story is about much more than art. Today their 200,000 plus paintings have gathered significant interest and have become quite collectible. At auctions some of these particular painters' works have been recognized with high prices, notably important older works by the "original" members.

‘Cultural Heritage Cuisine’

‘Sylvia’s Soul Food’ Restaurant owner, Sylvia Woods, the "Queen of Soul Food”, is the founder and owner of the world famous Sylvia's Restaurant, located in the historical village of Harlem, since 1962. Sylvia, is one of many nationally known cultural significant eating establishments that are know for their outstanding Soul Food cuisine.

Soul food is a variety of cuisine associated with the African American culture of the Southern United States. The term soul food became popular in the 1960s. The origins of soul food, however, are much older and can be traced back to Africa and to Europe, as well.

Foods such as rice, sorghum, and okra are common stables of West African cuisine and were brought to the Americas via the Atlantic Slave Trade. They became the food staples for enslaved Africans.

Many culinary historians believe that in the beginning of the 14th century, around the time of early Euro-African exploration, European explorers brought their own food supplies and introduced them into local African diets. Foods such as corn and cassava from the Americas, turnips from Morocco, and cabbage from Portugal were important part in the history of Soul Food. When the Europeans began their African slave trade in the early 15th century, the indigenous crops of Africa began showing up in the Americas.

European enslavers fed their captive workers as cheaply as possible, often with leftover/waste foods from the plantation, forcing slaves to make do with the ingredients at hand. In slave households, 'vegetables' consisted of the tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions.

Soon, African-American slaves were cooking with new types of "greens": collards, kale, cress, mustard, and pokeweed. They also developed recipes which used lard, cornmeal, and discarded cuts of meats; pigs feet, oxtail, ham hocks, pig ears, pork jowls, tripe, and skin.

Cooks added onion, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf to enhance the flavor.

Cultural Heritage Cuisine Continued:

For meat, slave owners provided their slaves with the poor parts of the pig, such as the small intestines (Chitterlings). Chitterlings were a dish of poor people in medieval England and the name was adopted by the African-Americans. Some African-American slaves supplemented their meager diets by gardening small plots given to them for growing their own vegetables.

Many engaged in subsistence fishing and hunting, which yielded wild game for the table.

Foods such as rabbits, raccoon, squirrel, opossum, and turtle were a common delicacy, until the 1950’s in the rural Southern states.

Because it was illegal in many states for enslaved Africans to learn to read or write, soul food recipes and cooking techniques tended to be passed along orally, until after their emancipation. The first soul food cookbook is recorded as being authored by Abby Fisher, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, published in 1881. Good Things to Eat was published in 1911; the author, Rufus Estes, was a former slave who worked for the Pullman Railway car service. Many other cookbooks were written by African Americans during that time, but as they were not widely distributed, most are now lost. Since the mid20th Century, many cookbooks highlighting soul food , compiled by African Americans, have been published and well received. Vertamae Grosvenor’s Vibration Cooking, or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, originally published in 1970, focused on South Carolina’s Lowcountry/Gullah/Gechee cooking. It was a bestseller.

‘Cultural Heritage Music’ Motown & Stax Records

The ‘Chitlin’ Circuit

The "Chitlin' Circuit" is the collective name given to the string of performance venues throughout the eastern, southern, and upper mid-west areas of the United States that were safe and acceptable for African American musicians, comedians, and other entertainers to perform in during the age of racial segregation in the United States (from at least the early 19th century through the 1960s).

In the 21st century, the term is applied to the venues where contemporary African-American blues singers such as Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, and O.B. Buchana continue to appear regularly, especially in the South. The name derives from the soul food item, chitterlings, (stewed pig intestines).

It is also a play on the term “Borscht Belt”, which referred to a group of resort venues (primarily in New York State's Catskill Mountains) that were popular with Jewish performers and audiences during the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

Noted theaters and night clubs on the Chitlin' Circuit included the Royal Peacock in Atlanta; the Carver Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama; the Cotton Club, Smalls Paradise and the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City; Robert’s Show Lounge, Club DeLisa and the Regal Theatre in Chicago; the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.; the Uptown Theatre in Philadelphia; the Royal Theatre in Baltimore; the Fox Theatre in Detroit; the Victory Grill in Austin, Texas; the Hippodrome Theatre in Richmond, Virginia; the Ritz Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida; the Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Red Bird Café in Frenchtown, Tallahassee, Florida, and the Madam C.J. Walker Theatre on Indiana Avenue, in Indianapolis.

According to Ruth Brown, an artist needed to play at four of these theaters to prove they had made it: the Regal Theater in Chicago, the Howard in Washington, the Uptown in Philadelphia, and the Apollo in New York. This was called the "litchman chain’’. The song “Tuxedo Junction" was written about a stop along the Chitlin' Circuit in Birmingham. Once the performance was over, the band would leave for the next stop on the circuit. After composing the music, Erskine Hawkins explained the reason for the title to Buddy Feyne, who created lyrics to express the concept.

Many notable 20th-century performers worked on the Chitlin' Circuit, including Count Basie, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Peg Leg Bates, George Benson, Hammond B-3, James Brown, Cab Callaway, Ray Charles, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, The Jackson Five, Redd Foxx, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, John Lee Hook, Lena Horne, Etta James, B.B. King, Patti LaBelle, Moms Mabley, The Delfonis, Gladys Knights &the Pips, Wilson Pickett, Richard Pryor, Otis Redding, Lonnie Smith, Marvin Gaye, Little Richard, The Miracles, Ike and Tina Turner, The Four Tops, The Isley Brothers, The Supremes, The Temptations, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Tammi Terrell, Muddy Waters, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Flip Wilson, Jimmie Walker, Roy Hamilton and the 5 Stair Steps.

Jazz – Blues - Gospel

The African American culture is responsible for most of the innovations in modern music.

Blues, jazz, gospel, soul, rock and roll, rap, hip-hop, and southern soul are innovations traced to tribal music. In the world of music, my culture, the African American tribe, still can hear the beat of the drum from the mother continent.

My ancestors in Africa were in tune – spiritually to their world and universe. Tribal music of 400 years ago differed in one respect from the music of European and white American music. There was no secular music. Secular music did not exist. All African music was naturally sacred and the concept of singing sacred music was alien to them. My African ancestors used music and song to satisfy the basic functions in their lives, religion, agriculture and sexual fertility, hunting and war. Sounds familiar! In this regards, African music had more in common with the Native American music than European music, because songs were used as a means to be in harmony with nature and the universe.

Music was the most powerful tool the African slave had to keep its culture alive. Slave owners recognized this and forbid slaves to use traditional African instruments and songs during celebrations and gatherings. The banjo and drum were forbidden.

In an attempt to control the spirit of the huge slave population, slave master introduced them to sacred music and edited versions of the bible. Through worship, a new and empowered being was created spiritually. Slaves quickly learned a new method of channeling and incorporating their traditions and beliefs around the platform of European sacred music. At last, they were able to communicate under the guise of praise. They held camp meeting and redeveloped their spiritual tribal connection to one another and from one plantation tribe to another. A new tribe was created through praise and worship. From praise and music, other forms of communications were developed around their daily lives. Knowledge about free states and safe havens were passed from one slave to another by how a quilt was hung on the line, or a row was hoed, or a buggy was parked.

Jazz-Blues-Gospel Continued:

Signed unknown by the masters, but understood by the slaves. And masters allowed, them to have their own preachers and praise and worship service; their world and America would never be the same. The discovery of the power of tribal music and sacred music, allowed slaves to gain acceptance into nineteenth century civilized society. The singing and playing of African versions of American folk music, allowed ragtime performers like Scott Joplin to become popular and some soon became associated with the Harlem Renaissance and early civil rights activists. More and more African Americans were accepted into the American mainstream culture. Tribal music was slowly changing the culture of America.

The early part of the twentieth century saw a constant rise in the popularity of African American blues and jazz. In Harlem, musicians and singers developed their music as professionals, without any outside cultural interference. Segregated in an African-like tribal environment, creativity ruled. Harlem singers and musicians created a unique tribal music and introduced it to America and the world. Latinos and white performers delivered it into the American culture via performances on stage together. Cross-cultural communication had begun, although it had a “Latin Tinge’ to make it more acceptable.

Soon white bands were routinely playing African American music, in a simplified version for white audiences, who would not have as readily accepted black performers. This led to what is known as swing music, a pop-based outgrowth of jazz. Harlem musicians cracked the door that so many of us walked through and were responsible for the cultural changes and acceptance in our society and gave black artist the freedom we enjoy today.

By the 1940’s, cover versions of African American songs were commonplace, and frequently topped the charts. Unfortunately, the original musicians could only find success in African American audiences. Mainstream audiences were still off limits. On the horizon at the time was a generation that would introduce to the world, a class of music called rock and roll. Little Richard and Jackie Brenston would soon arrive on the African market, with their version of tribal music.

The next decade saw the first major crossover acts, with Bill Haley and Elvis Presley performing rockabilly, a rock and country fusion, while black artists like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley received unprecedented mainstream success. Elvis Presley went on to become perhaps the most lauded and culturally changing musician in American history and marked the beginning of the acceptance of musical tastes crossing racial boundaries among all audiences. He was also the first in a long line of white performers to achieve what some perceive as undue fame for his influence, since many of his fans showed no desire to learn about the origin of his music and its creators.

The fifties also ushered in the popularity of doo wop music and the late fifties also saw an increased popularity of hard blues in the United States and the United Kingdom. A secularized form of American gospel music called soul also developed, with pioneers like Ben E. King and Sam Cooke, leading the wave. Soul and R&B became a major influence on mainstream radio and often topped the charts.

The ‘Chitlin’ Circuit

The "Chitlin' Circuit" is the collective name given to the string of performance venues throughout the eastern, southern, and upper mid-west areas of the United States that were safe and acceptable for African American musicians, comedians, and other entertainers to perform in during the age of racial segregation in the United States (from at least the early 19th century through the 1960s).

In the 21st century, the term is applied to the venues where contemporary African-American blues singers such as Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, and O.B. Buchana continue to appear regularly, especially in the South. The name derives from the soul food item, chitterlings, (stewed pig intestines).

It is also a play on the term “Borscht Belt”, which referred to a group of resort venues (primarily in New York State's Catskill Mountains) that were popular with Jewish performers and audiences during the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

Noted theaters and night clubs on the Chitlin' Circuit included the Royal Peacock in Atlanta; the Carver Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama; the Cotton Club, Smalls Paradise and the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City; Robert’s Show Lounge, Club DeLisa and the Regal Theatre in Chicago; the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.; the Uptown Theatre in Philadelphia; the Royal Theatre in Baltimore; the Fox Theatre in Detroit; the Victory Grill in Austin, Texas; the Hippodrome Theatre in Richmond, Virginia; the Ritz Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida; the Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Red Bird Café in Frenchtown, Tallahassee, Florida, and the Madam C.J. Walker Theatre on Indiana Avenue, in Indianapolis.

According to Ruth Brown, an artist needed to play at four of these theaters to prove they had made it: the Regal Theater in Chicago, the Howard in Washington, the Uptown in Philadelphia, and the Apollo in New York. This was called the "litchman chain’’. The song “Tuxedo Junction" was written about a stop along the Chitlin' Circuit in Birmingham. Once the performance was over, the band would leave for the next stop on the circuit. After composing the music, Erskine Hawkins explained the reason for the title to Buddy Feyne, who created lyrics to express the concept.

Many notable 20th-century performers worked on the Chitlin' Circuit, including Count Basie, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Peg Leg Bates, George Benson, Hammond B-3, James Brown, Cab Callaway, Ray Charles, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, The Jackson Five, Redd Foxx, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, John Lee Hook, Lena Horne, Etta James, B.B. King, Patti LaBelle, Moms Mabley, The Delfonis, Gladys Knights &the Pips, Wilson Pickett, Richard Pryor, Otis Redding, Lonnie Smith, Marvin Gaye, Little Richard, The Miracles, Ike and Tina Turner, The Four Tops, The Isley Brothers, The Supremes, The Temptations, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Tammi Terrell, Muddy Waters, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Flip Wilson, Jimmie Walker, Roy Hamilton and the 5 Stair Steps.

History of Black Owned Hotels

The history of the industry that provides sleeping quarters is not totally devoid of Black Hotel Owners. Black-owned and operated hotels have existed since pre-turn of the century.

“It was only in the 20th century that American hospitality became truly democratic.

Beginning in 1908, E.M. Statler challenged the hotel industry’s attention to the wealthy by declaring that he would offer hospitality “at a price ordinary people can afford.” Statler’s slogan, “A bed and a bath for a dollar and a half,” launched his hotel empire and made him, as a 1950 trade journal put it, “The Hotel Man of the Half Century.” A decade later, the civil rights movement launched a wave of demonstrations against discrimination in travel facilities.

Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech—which evoked the plight of black wayfarers with the reminder that “our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities”—helped persuade Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations.”

James Wormley (1819-1884), born free in Washington, is best known as the owner and operator of the Wormley Hotel, which opened in 1871. Wormley was one of a number of entrepreneurs in the hotel and other service trades with downtown businesses. The hotel catered primarily to wealthy and politically powerful white males in the city.

The five-story Wormley Hotel contained a bar, a barbershop, and an acclaimed dining room where Wormley served European-style dishes using fresh ingredients he grew on his nearby farm. Wormley, who had spent time in Europe honing his culinary skills, was a consummate entrepreneur, attending to minute details to ensure the pleasure of his guests.

The hotel is also famous as the site of the Wormley Conference of 1877, when representatives of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden brokered a deal over the contested presidential election of 1876. The eventual result was the Compromise of 1877, which led to the removal of troops from the South and the end of Federal Reconstruction.

Wormley's parents were Lynch and Mary Wormley, both also free born. After Wormley's death in 1884, his eldest son, James T. Wormley, managed the hotel into the 1890s. It was taken over by new owners and renamed the Colonial in 1897. The hotel was later razed, and the Union Trust Company building was constructed on the site in 1906.

History of Black Owned Hotels continued:

Hotel Theresa The renowned Hotel Theresa in Harlem was a vibrant center of black life in Harlem, New York City, in the mid-20th century. The hotel sits at the intersection of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (better known as 7th Avenue and 125th Street). It opened in 1913 and was from then, until the construction of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building across the street in 1973, the tallest building in Harlem. It has a striking white brick facade and was known as the "Waldorf Astoria of Harlem." From the time it opened until 1940, the hotel accepted only white guests plus a few black celebrities. This changed when the hotel passed to new management.

Louis Armstrong, Sugar Ray Robinson, Lena Horne, Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, Duke Ellington, Muhammad Ali, Dinah Washington, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Jimi Hendrix all stayed in the Hotel or lived there for a time, as did Fidel Castro, while in New York for the 1960 opening session of the United Nations, after storming out of the Hotel Shelburne because of that hotel manager's "unacceptable cash" demands.[1] Castro's entourage rented 80 rooms at the Thersa for $800 per day.[2]

The hotel profited from the refusal of prestigious hotels elsewhere in the city to accept black guests. As a result, black businessmen, performers, and athletes were thrown under the same roof.

After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X maintained his competing Organization of Afro-American Unity at the hotel and hosted meetings there. He met Cassius Clay in the hotel on various occasions.

Bill Clinton's commerce secretary, Ron Brown, grew up in the hotel, where his father worked as manager. U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) once worked there as a desk clerk. The hotel may have enjoyed its greatest prominence in 1960. Nikita Khruschev visited New York in that year, during the week when Castro was staying in Harlem, and came to meet him in the hotel. Also, in October of 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency at the hotel, along with Eleanor Roosevelt and other powerful figures in the Democratic Party.

The hotel suffered from the continued deterioration of Harlem through the 1950s and 1960s, and, ironically, from the end of segregation elsewhere in the city. As black people of means had alternatives, they stopped coming to Harlem. The hotel closed in 1967.

After remaining vacant for four years, the building was converted to office space in 1971, and now goes by the name "Theresa Towers," though a sign with the old name is still painted on the side of the building, and the old name is still commonly used. It now serves as an auxiliary campus for Teachers College, Columbia University. The building was declared a landmark by the City of New York in 1993.

History of Black Owned Hotels continued:

The Henry's Hotel South Division Street and Baltimore Avenue, Ocean City. Formerly known as "Henry's Colored Hotel," this building is a prominent historic site in Ocean City.

Reportedly erected during the last decade of the 19th century, the three-story wood-shingled structure is one of the oldest hotels in the city and the last hotel that served black visitors to the ocean resort during the early to mid-20th century. Reserved periods, known as "Colored Excursion Days," were limited to days after the main summer season. Charles T. and Louis Henry bought the hotel in December 1926. After Charles T. died in 1942 the hotel was held by his wife and then his son, Charles Wesley Henry. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong were guests of Henry's Hotel in the days when black entertainers could perform in major hotel ballrooms, yet not sleep in the hotels.

In the early seventies, eighties and nineties there were only three hotels in the United States that were franchised and part of a major hotel chain. The first was a Holiday Inn in Tuskegee, AL that opened in the early seventies and later became the Tuskegee Inn before going out of business. The second was opened by Mabra Holeyfield and Frank Banks as the Benchmark Hotel in 1983 and became the Days Inn in 1988. That hotel was sold in 2008 to NABHOOD’s Chairman, Mike Roberts and will be converted to a Clarion Collection. The third was the 105 room Travelodge Hotel when an investment group led by the city’s first African American mayor and businessman Harvey Gantt, purchased a bankrupt hotel and cafeteria in the heart of Charlotte’s African American community. After a two million dollar renovation, the hotel opened in July 1998. There were a few flagstones with small hotels like the first Black owned hotel in the nation’s capital, Howard Inn, that opened as the Humbree House in the early eighties.

The Eureka Hotel The Eureka Hotel, the two-story, red-brick Victorian built in 1885 became an upscale hotel in the early 1930s, making it the city's oldest African American hotel. Now its owners are willing to donate it to anyone who wants to restore the building allegedly housed guests such as Duke Ellington, but no one knew about the house's history until construction signs went up in early January, prompting residents to find a way to save the historic structure.

Located two blocks away from the National Civil Rights Museum, the hotel operated until the 1980s, when Irvin Landsky bought it and turned it into a rental property. When he died in 2001, his daughter, Cheri Rudner, and her husband, Henry, inherited the Eureka Hotel and decided to demolish the house.

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Alabama (Featured Travel Magazine)

Introducing The ‘ALABAMA’ Culture and Heritage Guide

By Pan Africa!

WHERE TO GO!

Our 2021 Cultural Heritage Tourism and Travel Recommendation

BIRMINGHAM MONTGOMERY MOBILE SELMA TUSKEGEE

ALABAMA

Table of Content Letter from the Publisher ​

Page - 1

Central Florida Association of Black Journalists

Page - 2

Birmingham

Page - 3

Birmingham - Cultural Sites​

Page - 5

Birmingham - Heritage Sites​

Page - 7

Birmingham - Restaraunts​

Page - 11

Birmingham - The Arts and Entertainment

Page - 13

Birmingham - Events ​

Page - 15

Montgomery

Page - 17

Montgomery - Cultural Sites

Page - 18

Montgomery - Heritage Sites

Page - 21

Montgomery - Shops and Restaraunts​

Page - 25

Montgomery - Events​

Page - 28

Mobile

Page - 29

History of Mobile

Page - 30

Mobile - Cultural Sites

Page - 32

Mobile - Historic Sites

Page - 33

Mobile - Places of Worship

Page - 35

Mobile - Events

Page - 36

Selma

Page - 37

Selma - Attractions

Page - 38

Tuskegee

Page - 41

History of Tuskeege

Page - 42

Pan African American Travel Club

Page - 47

The “South”

Page - 51

Southern Cultural Heritage Trails

Page - 52

Pan African American Cultural Heritage Media

Page - 55

Become A Member

Page - 61

Become A Sponsor

Page - 62

The Institute’s E-Magazine

Page - 63

Pan African Cultural Heritage Societies

Page - 66

Societies Continued

Page - 68

Letter from the Publisher Cultural Heritage Tourism and Travel 2021

Alabama and The South Welcome to the First ‘Pan Africa!’, Cultural Heritage Tourism Edition! ‘Pan Africa!’ is a quarterly membership magazine that explores the culture and historical connectivity of the People of African Descent across the globe.

‘Pan Africa!’ is a production of the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Media Network, a department of the Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute and in partnership and direction of the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. and the National Cultural Heritage Tourism Center, Inc..

One of the most important states associated with the Culture and History of African Americans, is the State of Alabama. One can not begin to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement, without spending the majority of time explaining the importance of the struggle in Alabama. It truly was a ‘Battle Ground State’! It is the Gettysburg of the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the state was a focal point and is the rise of African Americans as we transitioned from enslavement to freedom, fighting the shackles of Jim Crow and the limitations of legal segregation. Alabama helped produce extraordinary leaders in the battle for equality and justice. Leaders from within the state and across the country. It is the publisher’s opinion, that no other state has played a such a significant role in the delivery of our freedom, than the Great State of Alabama. And because of this opinion, Alabaman was selected to be the first state profiled in the 2021 Edition of the Pan Africa Cultural Heritage Tourism and Travel Magazine.

Hopefully you will find the information enlightening, useful and informative as you plan your business and family vacation travels for 2021. We encourage you to consider traveling to or adding a stop in one of the great historical cities and sites in Alabama or one of the of the other states in the South! You will not be disappointed, and your life will be enriched following the experience..

Bless YOU!

E.Franklin Eugene Franklin Publisher/Chairman Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute

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Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute, Inc. is a proud member of the Central Florida Association of Black Journalists and publishes ‘Pan Africa!’, under the journalistic umbrella of the Association.

About CFABJ: The Central Florida Association of Black Journalists was originally founded in 1983 as the Black Media Association/Central Florida. Its mission was to form a regional network of professionals to improve skills, share ideas and experiences. Currently CFABJ serves journalists, media and public relations professionals, and student and professors in the communications field in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Brevard, Volusia, and Lake Counties.

The CFABJ are an affiliate chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

The objectives of the CFABJ are as follow: • • • • •

• • •

Inform the Central Florida community – placing special emphasis on the area’s Black population about the importance of the mass media as it relates to a resident’s daily life, needs and concerns.

Regularly critique reportorial deficiencies in the local media in relation to Black people.

Assist the Black community in the usage of the media and to expose print and broadcast media to the need for fair, impartial and adequate coverage of news in the Black community.

Improve professional skills among Black journalists and broadcasters and, at the same time, to honor excellence and outstanding achievements in the field.

Strengthen ties between whites, Blacks, and other minorities in the mass media, and to provide a support system for fellow Black communicators.

Monitor affirmative action and Federal Communications Commission guidelines for equal employment opportunity at Central Florida print and broadcast companies; to serve as an employee advocate when necessary; and to work to increase the numbers of Black journalists in managerial and supervisory positions.

Work with high school and college students aspiring toward careers in the media.

Act as a resource for journalism teachers and other academic professionals, and to encourage the appointment of Black journalism teachers and professors at local schools and colleges.

Network job opportunities throughout the country in general and in the Central Florida area in particular.

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BIRMINGHAM Historic Cultural Community Birmingham Fourth Avenue A black business district formed just after 1890.

In a pattern characteristic of Southern cities found during Reconstruction, black businesses developed alongside those of whites in many sections of the downtown area.

After the turn of the 19th century, Jim Crow laws authorizing the distinct separation of the races and subsequent restrictions placed on local companies compressed the growing black business community into an area along Third, Fourth and Fifth Avenues North, from 15th to 18th Streets.

Segregation and discrimination created a small world in which black enterprise was accepted and to which African-Americans had open access. This area served as our business, social and cultural center with activities similar to those in the predominantly white districts.

Businesses located in the area included barber and beauty shops, mortuaries, saloons, restaurants, theaters, photographic studios,

3

and motels. Those black businesses and their successors continued to do well throughout the 1960s.

Birmingham Fourth Avenue district had a thriving nightlife. On Friday and Saturday nights, the streets were filled with crowds of people visiting bars or just out for a stroll. Live entertainment made the district “the place to be.” Monroe Kennedy, a blind bookie, made sure that Fourth Avenue got its fair share of the Big Swing Bands. This seven-story building was designed by black architects, Taylor & Persley and built by Windham Brothers Construction Company, another Blackowned business. Not only was the Masonic Temple used for entertainment, it housed black professional offices and was the state headquarters for the Masons and Order of Eastern Stars.

Today, many of the long-closed buildings have reopened as new businesses. Fourth Avenue District is once again home to several black-owned restaurants that keep it real.

Photo // Chris Pruitt

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Kelly Ingram Park and 16th Street Baptist Church are also part of the district. The old Carver Theatre is now home to both the Carver Performing Arts Theatre and the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame where exhibits include a look at the jazz legends from the area.

The district is also important to Soul Music enthusiasts. It hosted touring artists from Motown and Stax Records in small concerts and after-parties when they visited Birmingham.

Eddie Kendrick of the Temptations was born in Birmingham in 1937. He never forgot his roots and returned for his finals days before passing in 1992. Eddie Kendrick Memorial Park in the district features a must-see statue of silver-throated Eddie singing with original Temptations. Though it was dedicated in 1999, you can still imagine him singing Just My Imagination.

Photo // David Brossard

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Birmingham Cultural Sites Kelly-Ingram Park Pace Freedom Walk in the park slowly to digest the gravity, sacrifices and triumph as Civil Rights Movement theory met harsh reality at this National Historic site. Bronzed sculptures of police attacking civil rights protesters with a Billy-club, police dogs attacking civil rights marchers, children jailed for Civil Rights marching, and three ministers praying for justice capture a truthful snapshot of the madness of Jim Crow in the 1960s. It sends a visceral reminder to generations to come that America must never return to those days of discrimination against any group of people. A statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and four paths along Freedom Walk converge towards a center inscription with calming words of hope.

Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame Fittingly based in the historic Carver Center for the Performing Arts, Birmingham’s citizens and civic leaders deserve ‘props for this noteworthy contextual reuse of a Chitlin’ Circuit theater. This is noteworthy because most Chitlin’ Circuit theaters around the nation have be “redeveloped” out of existence; the concert theatre features a number of contemporary shows. Carver Center is under renovation.

Historic Fourth Avenue Visitor Center Tours, photographs and a slide presentation tell stories of the Fourth Avenue district: a commercial, social and cultural center for AfricanAmericans since the early years of the 20th century.

5

Eddie Kendricks & The Temptations Memorial Located in Memorial Park, this remarkable monument to the man with the golden tenor and the Tempting Temptations, by artist Ron McDowell. Perhaps no song ever captured the smooth delivery of Eddie (1940-1992) as the perfectly as his vocal signature piece, Just My Imagination, hailed by music critics as one of the best R&B songs of all-time.

Miles College Opened in 1908 this Historically Black College is excelling amidst a climate of financial challenges for similar institutions. Its one of the top colleges in terms of enrollment growth, compared to UNCF member institutions, graduation rates increased 68%, and endowment increased 281% since 1994. Notable among its 11,000 alumni are Richard Arrington, Birmingham’s first African American and 5-term mayor, UW Clemon, the first African American federal judge in Alabama, Dr Luther Williams, Assistant Directorate of the National Science Foundation. The attractive campus features all the spirit one expects for such an historic small liberal arts college of 1200 students.

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Photo // David Mark

Birmingham Heritage Sites Kelly Ingram Park This National Historic Site symbolizes the essence of the Civil Rights Movement.

Protesters organized for marches here when they were beaten by police, brutally attacked by police dogs, fire-hosed and arrested. Their nightly televised civil rights struggle between 2-7 May 1963 captivated a nation when there were only 3 national networks and you could believe what you saw on the national news.

The park is named in honor of Osmond Kelly Ingram, the first American sailor killed in World War I.

Metropolitan AME Zion Church Founded in 1885 under the leader of Bishop WA Stewart, with the current edifice built in 1903 and rebuilt in 1955, this church was also key to the civil rights marches played out in Kelly Ingram Park.

Booker T Washington Insurance Building Founded in 1923, this multi-building complex housed one of the largest African American insurance companies on the Black Enterprise Insurance Companies list.

7

16th Street Baptist Church Although founded in 1873, the current church was designed by Black architect Wallace A Rayfield and built by the Windham Brothers Construction Company in 1911 as the finest of its kind in Alabama.

Directly adjacent to downtown and under the leadership of then Rev John H Cross, the church with a seating capacity of 1,600 lent itself to be the staging area for the civil rights protests. It was the location of a 16 September 1963 bombing that killed four little girls in the Ladies Lounge School — Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Carol Robertson and wounded 22 others. Most historians credit the 4 martyred girls for putting a noble face on the Civil Rights Movement. Nearly $230,000 in worldwide donations poured in to rebuild the church and help the bereaved families.

The front of the church has been restored and a memorial to the girls is accessible downstairs. Rev. Dr Chistopher M. Hamlin has written a book about the history of the church. In 2013, the four little girls were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

St. Paul United Methodist Church St. Paul is one of the oldest United Methodist Congregations in Alabama.

Photo // Clark Tibbs

Smithfield Historic District One of the earliest Birmingham African American neighborhoods since the 1890s and on the National Register of Historic Places, this district is a notable reminder of how social and economic class distinctions were formed in the Black community. European-American civic officials zoned homes in the area for middleclass African-Americans. To be a doctor, lawyer, educator, pastor, businessperson of means was to live here. AG Gaston, one of the earliest African American millionaires, and political activist Angela Y. Davis lived in the area. A historic marker is located at Eighth Avenue and Center Street.

Windham Construction Building Opened in 1912, it was once home to the oldest African American construction company in Alabama. Thomas Windham immigrated from New Orleans and established this business in 1895. In 1897 his brother Benjamin Windham joined him after graduating with honors from Leland University, then located in New Orleans.

Though based in Birmingham the successful Windham Brothers Construction Company established branch offices in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Nashville. The building served as Thomas Windham’s personal home as well as offices for several small businesses. The company operated here until 1966, when Lewis Windham, only son of Thomas Windham died.

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Dr A M Brown House Arthur McKinnon Brown (1867-1939), one of the earliest black physicians, commissioned Wallace A. Rayfield (1874-1941) the official architect for all AME churches in America and many Fourth Avenue District buildings, to design his home. After graduating from Lincoln University, Dr Brown graduated with honors in surgery and ophthalmology from Michigan Medical School in 1891. He later founded Children’s Home Hospital, which was for many years the only hospital for Birmingham’s African Americans. He also instituted Negro National Health Week which evolved to National Health Week. The house is now a community center stewarded by the Birmingham Arts Club.

Tuggle Elementary School In 1903, Carrie Tuggle (1858-1924) founded a school and orphanage, the Tuggle Institute; she worked with delinquent boys and as a welfare officer then conceived of providing housing facilities for orphaned black children. After fundraising, she and her supporters opened a one-building school and residence for homeless black boys.

Distinguished alumni include Dr. A.G. Gaston, Angela Davis, Ersking Hawkins, and John T. Whatley. Tuggle is honored in the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame. Today the venue serves as an elementary school and her grave site is out back.

Tuxedo Junction Jazz composer Erskine Hawkins named his 1939 hit song after a 2nd floor dance hall in the Nixon building at this streetcar crossing, Tuxedo Junction. In the 1920s and 1930s, this nightclub was a nexus for Black Birmingham nightlife.

Angela Y. Davis Residence on Dynamite Hill The famous political activist, feminist, socialist and professor Angela Y. Davis (1994-) hails from this neighborhood when her family moved here in 1948. Newspapers gave her neighborhood the name “Dynamite Hill” when the KKK drew a racial dividing line by bombing over 20 homes from 1955 onwards in a white residential section that started selling more homes to black families.

Police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor had a lack of interest in catching and prosecuting the perpetrators. In fact, infamous Chief Connor was so bad he even asked Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth to take a lie detector test to clear his name in the bombing of his own house in Dynamite Hill. In that racial climate spawning from this district, Birmingham became infamously known as “Bombingham.”son of Thomas Windham died.

Historic WENN Radio A historic landmark, WENN Radio is one of the oldest African American radio stations in the South.

Citizen’s Federal Savings Bank Though housed in a modern building, this bank was founded in 1956 by AG Gaston to serve the African American community.

Slossfield Community Center Built in 1939 by African American Acipco workers with funds matched by Acipco management, this structure won a national award in 1940 for “Outstanding Negro Community Center in the US.” Awaiting restoration and re-use.

Shadow Lawn Cemetery The Four Little Girls killed in the 1963 bombing (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Carol Robertson) of 16th Street Baptist Church are interred here along with many other African Americans from Birmingham.

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Treat Your Tastebuds At These

Restaurants Green Acres Cafe Part of a three cafe chain, the cafe located in a renovated historic building formerly known as the “OK Dry Cleaning Building.”

Opened in 1915, it was one of the earliest black businesses in Fourth Avenue District.

Cuisine: Soul Food Price Range: Days & Hours: Monday - Saturday 9 AM - 11 PM Address: 1705 Fourth Avenue North Birmingham, AL Phone: 205-251-3875 Website: www.greenacrescafe.com

Mrs B’s On Fourth This classic old restaurant serves Home cooking without pork. Daily specials and entrees include: baked chicken, meat loaf, BBQ ribs, pot roast, fried chicken, & fried fish. Side items includes fried corn, turnip greens, macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes, rice, black-eyed peas, squash casserole, pinto beans, candied yams, fried corn. Don’t forget the homemade peach cobbler and banana pudding.

Cuisine: Soul Food Price Range: Days & Hours: Daily 11 AM - 7 PM Address: 328 16th Street North Birmingham, AL Phone: 205-801-5165 Website: www.mrsbsonfourth.com

Nelson Brothers Cafe Arguably the best breakfast in Birmingham; salmon croquettes, rice & gravy, pancakes are just a few of the many home cooked meals served.

Cuisine: Soul Food Price Range: Days & Hours: Monday - Friday 7:30 AM - 5 PM Saturday 6 AM - 2 PM Address: 312 17th Street North Birmingham, AL Phone: 205-254-9098

Original Green Acres Cafe The original location of a three-cafe chain. First opened in 1915, it was one of the earliest black businesses in this district.

Cuisine: Soul Food Price Range: Days & Hours: Monday - Saturday 9 AM - 11 PM Address: 2724 29th Avenue North Birmingham, AL Phone: 205-328-8099 Website: www.greenacrescafe.com

Larry’s Fish Pot & Barbecue What this restaurant lacks in décor, it makes up for in good food. There are only a few tables so most customers order to go. Excellent BBQ, fried fish & collard greens. You get a lot on your plate for your money.

Cuisine: Soul Food Price Range: Days & Hours: Wednesday - Thursday 10 AM - 9 PM Friday - Saturday 10 AM - 11 PM Address: 2300 9th Avenue North, Bessemer, AL Phone: 205-424-9613

Photo // Janine Robinson

The Arts and Entertainment A

labama Jazz & Soul has a rich Black Music history anchored in greater Birmingham and Montgomery. Nat King Cole, Lionel Hampton, Erskine Hawkins, Clarence “Pinetop” Smith and Sonny Blount (Sun Ra) dotted the musical landscape as performing artists here. The many clubs on Fourth Avenue and Tuxedo Junction made Birmingham an essential stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit during Segregation. Performers such as Duke Ellington, Lucky Millender, Claude Hopkins, Jimmy Lunceford, Fess Whatley (Southland Greatest Swing Band) and Louis Armstrong were known to frequent the Masonic Temple.

In 1956, Nat King Cole returned to Alabama, where his integrated group played to a segregated audience in the municipal auditorium in Birmingham. Unfortunately at that time of high racial tensions, trouble was to be expected. Four members of the White Citizens Council attacked him on the stage. Although hurt, Cole returned to the stage after the assailants were removed

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and completed his performance before the large audience. After the show, Cole vowed never to return to the South. An incident like that partially explains why so many talented Black musical artists who grew up in Alabama left.

Maybe it’s something in the water, because more talent always sprang forward. Who can ever forget the silky smooth tenor of Eddie Kendricks of the The Temptations. No disrespect to the current Temptations tenor, but every Temptations fan knows that Eddie’s voice was irreplaceable. The word “smooth” fails to describe the remarkable pure voice of that skinny beloved tenor.

As important as their contributions are, Alabama has another surprising Soul Music legacy that was kept an important secret for many years.

Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section began recording in 1965 in a community 60 miles northeast of Birmingham. Though you could never tell by their soulful sound famous for their rhythm and horns,

the original members Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, Barry Beckett and Roger Hawkins, were white. A long list of Soul, Blues and Gospel artists trekked here to record instrumentals for hit songs and albums. Here’s a small sample: • Etta James – Tell Mama • Percy Sledge – When a Man Loves a Woman • Wilson Pickett – Mustang Sally • Aretha Franklin – Chain of Fools • Patti Labelle – Dreamer • The Staple Singers – I’ll Take You There • Luther Ingram – If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right • Bobby Womack – Understanding • Millie Jackson – Hurts So Good • The Dells – Give Your Baby a Standing Ovation • Eddie Floyd – Baby Lay Your Head Down • Johnnie Taylor – Super Taylor • The Emotions – Untouched • James Brown – It’s Too Funky In Here • Bobby Blue Bland – Members Only • Ahmad Jamal – Digital Works • Bobbi Humphrey – City Beat • Mississippi Mass Choir – Live in Jackson, MS

Since good rhythm and horns are essential to most music, the services of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios were gleefully welcome to hit folk, pop, country and gospel artists as well.

Visitors should know more about this bright part of Alabama’s history. You are nicely reminded of these diamond-like contributions of our musical heritage at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and the Eddie Kendricks & Temptations Memorial. These days, you can also enjoy Alabama Jazz & Soul Music at Steel City JazzFest each June.

Photo // Jorge Zapata

Photo // Konstantin Aal

Photo // SeppH

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January

Birmingham Events

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration - Annual community gathering to honor the civil rights leader; Birmingham

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Jun e Juneteenth Celebration - A major street fair, picnic and cultural celebration sponsored by Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; Kelly Ingram Park; www.bcri.org City Stages - Birmingham’s world class music festival; past performers include Ruben Studdard, Al Green, Kanye West, De La Soul, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic; Birmingham; www.citystages.org

February Black History Month - Series of programs sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; www.bcri.org Mardi Gras Celebration Birmingham Civil Rights Institute www.bcri.org

September Taste of 4th Avenue Jazz Festival A premier jazz fest in the Birmingham Civil Rights District; www.justataste.org Annual Native American Dance and Crafts Festival - Desoto Caverns Park; www.bcvb.org

October Magic City Football Classic - Annual head-smacking game between Alabama State and Alabama A&M; pre-game festivities includes a major parade; Birmingham, AL; www.soulofamerica.com/events/ black-college-football-classics/

December Kwanzaa - Begins 12/26; 7-day celebration of African American culture at various venues; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; www.soulofamerica.com/events/ kwanzaa-celebrations/

November Fred Shuttlesworth Awards Dinner - Annual celebration of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s anniversary and a day to honor Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth; Birmingham; www.bcri.org

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y r e m o ntg

Welcome To

o M

Alabama State Capital 17

Montgomery Cultural Sites Rosa Parks Museum, Library, Museum & Historic Site Constructed on the site of the old Empire Theatre, and in front of the bus stop where Parks was arrested for keeping her seat in 1955.

There is a marker at the arrest site. Exhibits tell the story of her bravery and the bravery of other civil rights activists and events.

Artifacts include an original copy of the Rosa Parks’ finger prints taken by police when she was arrested, as well as a vintage 1950’s Montgomery bus like the one Rosa Parks rode on. Wait for a tour by the museum director, who is knowledgeable about the Civil Rights Movement. This site is located on the campus of Troy State University.

Freedom Rides Museum Located at the historic Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station and opened on its 50th anniversary, where on 20 May 1961, an integrated group of 21 college students from Nashville arrived to protest segregationist laws in the South. The Freedom Riders encountered mob violence, but responded with non-violence and courage to help end racial segregation in all interstate transportation.

Their methods and courage continue to inspire nonviolent protest to change unjust laws worldwide; an award-winning exhibit on the building’s exterior traces the Freedom Rides history — it uses the words and images of Freedom Riders and those who opposed them.

Exhibits add additional information on the Freedom Rides and the way in which buildings were designed for racial segregation at that time. Share Your Story, an interactive video exhibit, will capture and show thoughts from riders, witnesses, and museum visitors.

Alabama State University Founded in Marion, Alabama in 1874 as a normal school and university for “colored” students and teachers; relocated to Montgomery in 1887

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Civil Rights Memorial Center The center expands the experience of the Memorial honoring the memory and achievements of those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement. State-of-the-art exhibits and information about Civil Rights Movement martyrs, a 69-seat theater, a classroom for educational activities, a section dedicated to contemporary social justice issues and the. Located behind the center is the Wall of Tolerance Memorial honoring those who died during the Civil Rights Movement. A circular black granite table records the names of the martyrs of the Movement and chronicles the history of the Movement in lines that radiate like the hands of a clock. On a curved, black granite wall behind the table is engraved Dr. King’s wellknown paraphrase of Amos Verse 5:24 – “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Southern Poverty Law Center First begun as a small civil rights law firm, it is now internationally known for its tolerance education programs, legal victories against white supremacist groups, tracking of hate groups, and sponsorship of the Civil Rights Memorial. The center was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, two local lawyers who shared a commitment to racial equality. Its first president was civil rights activist Julian Bond.

True heroes, Dees and Levin helped implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

National Center for the Study of Civil Rights & African-American Culture Its mission is to serve as a clearinghouse for information concerning Montgomery’s pivotal role in the shaping of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, and to preserve and disseminate information reflective of socioeconomic conditions, political culture and history of AfricanAmericans in Montgomery. Exhibits include the E.D. Nixon Collection from the “Father of the Montgomery Bus Boycott”; located on Alabama State University campus.

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Eddie Kendricks & The Temptations Memorial Located in Memorial Park, this remarkable monument to the man with the golden tenor and the Tempting Temptations, by artist Ron McDowell. Perhaps no song ever captured the smooth delivery of Eddie (1940-1992) as the perfectly as his vocal signature piece, Just My Imagination, hailed by music critics as one of the best R&B songs of all-time.

Miles College Opened in 1908 this Historically Black College is excelling amidst a climate of financial challenges for similar institutions. Its one of the top colleges in terms of enrollment growth, compared to UNCF member institutions, graduation rates increased 68%, and endowment increased 281% since 1994. Notable among its 11,000 alumni are Richard Arrington, Birmingham’s first African American and 5-term mayor, UW Clemon, the first African American federal judge in Alabama, Dr Luther Williams, Assistant Directorate of the National Science Foundation. The attractive campus features all the spirit one expects for such an historic small liberal arts college of 1200 students.

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Montgomery Heritage Sites 252 Montgomery Street

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On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks boarded the bus on Dexter Avenue at Court Square after a long workday as a seamstress at Montgomery Fair Department Store. After the bus traveled three blocks, it stopped at 252 Montgomery Street, where Rosa Parks was made to leave the bus for violating the city’s segregation laws and arrested.

When found guilty on 5 December 1955, Rosa Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was triggered by her arrest and became the third major event of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The first major event, Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision in May 1954, provided a legal basis for the boycott and other protests and fundraisers to end Jim Crow practices in America. The second major event was the brutal murder of Emmitt Till in Mississippi in August 1955, followed by his open casket funeral in Chicago — whose photograph was published in nearly every black newspaper and magazine. the site where Rosa Parks was removed from the bus is now home to Rosa Parks Museum & Library at Troy State University. Rosa and husband Raymond Parks, a barber and NAACP worker, were living at 634 Cleveland Court at the time of her arrest.

The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was named its president at this church; during the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, marchers rested at the church on their way to the State Capitol, so it is included on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail; the congregation moved to a new location (455 West Jeff Davis Ave) in 1990, and in 2002, the building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places; sides of the building are decorated with murals depicting Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and the Selma to Montgomery marches

Court Square

Dr. E.D. Nixon Residence

Despite its mundane plaza appearance today, this was a slave auction site before the Civil War and the location of Montgomery Fair Department Store where Rosa Parks worked until the day of her arrest in December 1955

Home of the key NAACP official who was known as the planning leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; he counseled and worked closely with Dr. King to navigate local politics and logistics to make the boycott successful; curbside viewing only

Mount Zion AME Zion Church

First Ladies of Montgomery Bus Boycott Marker It’s so easy to think of Rosa Parks as the Mother of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but that would be untrue; Mary Fairbanks, M.B. Bradford, Jo Ann Robinson, Aurelia S. Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Claudette Colvin, and Susie McDonald played pioneering roles before Rosa Parks and these heroic women did so without support from the NAACP; in 1949, Mary Fairbanks, chair of the English Department at Alabama State University, formed the Women’s Political Council of Black Women in Montgomery; in 1950, M.B. Bradford was arrested in Montgomery in violation of bus segregation laws and Jo Ann Robinson, after being mistreated on a Montgomery bus, became President of Women’s Political Council, then vowed to dismantle segregation laws; in 1955, Claudette Colvin and Aurelia S. Browder were arrested/forced to give their seats to white riders; a marker honoring Aurelia Browder and the other ladies has recently been placed in front of her home.

Centennial Hill Historic District In it’s heyday it was the neighborhood for prominent black homes and businesses; this district has national importance because the residents of this community put up the first money to fund the Bus Boycott before national money rolled in to help; its nexus was the intersection of Jackson and High Streets; Malden Brothers Barbershop is one of the oldest remaining businesses in the district

City of St. Jude During the 3rd and successful 1955 Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights, the grounds of this small city and Catholic social services complex became a haven for more than 30,000 civil rights marchers; famed entertainer Harry Belafonte organized artists for a “Stars for Freedom Rally” on the grounds; artists who attended included Mahalia Jackson; Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier, Nipsey Russell, James Baldwin, Alan King, Dick Gregory, Billy Eckstein, Tony Bennett, Leonard Benrstein, Lena Horne, Johnny Mathis, Nina Simone and Shelley Winters; many well-known freedom songs such as Oh, Freedom and the late Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna’ Come, were led by The SNCC Freedom Singers; far more than an artist, Belafonte raised thousands of dollars in bail money for the Freedom Riders, Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights Movement; today the campus building serves as a St. Jude Educational Institute, a Roman Catholic high school.

Nat King Cole’s Residence Childhood home of Nat King Cole (19191965), the great singer famous for such songs as “Mona Lisa” and “The Christmas Song”; Nat King Cole was the first Black entertainer to own a home in Beverly Hills and the 2nd to have their own national TV program; now part of Alabama State University, curbside viewing only

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Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church

Dexter Ave. King Memorial Baptist Church

The church was founded in 1877 in slave trader’s pen; in 1879, the Church’s trustees purchased this lot for $270 on the corner of Dexter Avenue and Decatur Streets; in 1887, the first registration of students for Alabama State University (then the Alabama Colored Peoples University) was held in the lower unit of the church; the Church’s first name, Second Colored Baptist Church, was later changed to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, when Market Street became Dexter Avenue in honor of Andrew Dexter, founder of the city; in 1978, the name was changed to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, in memory of its 20th pastor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who pastored here from 1954 to 1960 during the epicenter of the civil rights movement in Montgomery; in the basement is Dr. King’s original pulpit podium; in 1980, artist and Dexter deacon John W. Feagin, painted a large 10’ by 47’ mural in the church basement depicting scenes of Dr. King’s leadership in the Civil Rights Movement from Montgomery to Memphis; there are select memorabilia available in the church gift shop.

Mount Zion AME Zion Church The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was named its president at this church; during the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, marchers rested at the church on their way to the State Capitol, so it is included on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail; the congregation moved to a new location (455 West Jeff Davis Ave) in 1990, and in 2002, the building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places; sides of the building are decorated with murals depicting Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and the Selma to Montgomery marches

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Mount Zion AME Zion Church

First Baptist Church Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Residence

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Residence Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Parsonage was Dr. King’s residence from September 1954 to February 1960. King was new to Montgomery when Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955. Dr. King hadn’t developed any enemies or debts, which made him a natural to lead the Montgomery Improvement Association who organized of the bus boycott; nevertheless, leading the bus boycott put the King family at risk. On 31 January 1956, a bomb exploded on the front porch of this home, knocking out two front windows. Though inside the house, his wife and oldest daughter were uninjured.

King was leading a mass meeting at First Baptist Church several blocks away when the bomb went off. After rushing home, a huge agitated crowd gathered in front.

King quickly settled them down and sent everyone home peacefully. The home is restored to look as it did when the King family lived here.

Found in 1867 as an alternative to discrimination African-Americans faced at the other First Baptist Church in the city; from 1952 to 1961, the church was led by civil rights activist Rev. Ralph Abernathy — a good friend of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; John Lewis, who had been active at American Baptist College and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, was planning to enroll at Troy State University in an attempt to desegregate the school, and was invited to Montgomery; at First Baptist Church he met Abernathy and Dr. King; on 21 May 21 1961, the church was a refuge for Freedom Riders who were violently met at Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station; filled with 1500 worshipers & activists, the building was besieged by 3000 whites who threatened to burn it with Dr. King, Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker, and James Farmer also there; a call was placed to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy while bricks were thrown through the windows; RFK quickly sent U.S. marshals to keep the mob at bay until later dispersed by the Alabama National Guard; events that day played a crucial part in the desegregation of interstate travel that we take for granted today.

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Montgomery Shops and

Restaurants Malden Brothers Barber Shop Nelson Malden, was Martin Luther King’s barber when in Montgomery.

Malden was a student at Alabama State University during the Civil Rights Movement and has a wealth of pictures on the barbershop walls and in photo albums. Some of his photos came from a customer who worked for the State Department. There’s even a picture of Whoopi Goldberg who stopped by while filming The Long Walk Home; stop in for a haircut and listen to his animated stories about that historic time.

Days & Hours: Tuesday, Thursday & Friday 8 AM - 5 PM Saturday 8 AM - 4 PM Address: 407 South Jackson Street, Montgomery, AL Phone: 334-262-9249

Brenda’s Bar-B-Que Pit This barbecue pit took over where Sophia’s bar-b-qua left off.

Its a casual restaurant offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the average meal costing under $10-15. You can also order online.

Cuisine: Soul Food and Seafood Price Range: Days & Hours: Tuesday – Thursday 10:30 AM –7 PM Friday – Saturday 10:30 AM – 9 PM Address: 1457 Mobile Road, Montgomery, AL Phone: 334-262-9349

Martha’s Place Located in an inviting southern home setting, Martha Hawkins offers up home-style southern fare to visitors from all over the world.

Check out the wall of photos of famous patrons, like actress Whoopi Goldberg and articles describing how Hawkins first starting selling meals out of her house to get off of welfare.

Cuisine: Soul Food and BBQ Price Range: Days & Hours: Monday - Saturday 11 AM – 8 PM Sunday 10:20 AM - 3 PM Address: 458 Sayre Street, Montgomery, AL Phone: 334-263-9135

Butterfly Inn B&B Isaiah and Johnnie Sankey, both with HBCU and nursing backgrounds, put the “C” in customer service at this delightful inn. Book any of seven different rooms, each having their own decor with colorful names like European Peacock, Red Admiral and Zebra Butterfly. Meals are prepared by the owners.

Features: Full Breakfast, Cable TV, WiFi, Parking Price Range: Address: 135 Mildred Street, Montgomery, AL Phone: 334-265-9000 Website: On Facebook

Odessa’s Blessings Restaurant; similar to the southern home setting of Martha’s Place.

Entrees include: meat loaf, beef tips, fried chicken, beef stew, spaghetti pie, shrimp gumbo, fried fish, and turkey & dressing served with cornbread or rolls. A typical meal costs $5.

Cuisine: Soul Food Price Range: Days & Hours: Monday - Friday 10:30 AM - 2 PM Address: 726 Forest Avenue, Montgomery, AL Phone: 334-265-7726 Website: www.odessasblessings.com

Mission House Event location featuring different rooms for any special occasion. Whether you want to jazz up a family reunion or enliven a corporate gathering, you can count on this venue for an exceptional celebration. Their commitment is to offer an excellent location where you and your loved ones can enjoy being together.

Address: 461 South Court Street, Montgomery, AL Phone: 334-356-6869 Website: missionhousemontgomery.com

Travel today to discover these amazing locations.

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Montgomery Events

January

February

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration - Annual community gathering to honor the civil rights leader; www.king-raleigh.org/ natlevent

Black History Month - Various events celebrating Black History www.visitingmontgomery.com

March

Flimp Festival - Sponsored by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts; featuring art, entertainment and children’s activities; Blout Cultural Park; www.visitingmontgomery.com

Annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee Festival and parade celebrates the Selma to Montgomery March, Bloody Sunday, & The Voting Rights Act; Congressman John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Johnny Cochran, Harry Belafonte, Chris Tucker, President Bill Clinton, Sen. Barak Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Outkast, Amelia Boynton, and Russell Simmons have all attended. Selma www.thebridgecrossingjubilee.org

April

Jubilee Cityfest - Featuring Blues, Jazz, Gospel, R&B, KidsFest, ArtFest, Jubilee Run, “Thunder Over The River” fireworks, Sunrise Celebration Service, plenty of food and more; Montgomery; www.jubileecityfest.org

Jun e Juneteenth - Annual celebration of African American culture; Montgomery & Selma. www.juneteenth.com

Septemb er Alabama Jazz and Blues Federation River Jam - Downtown Montgomery www.visitingmontgomery.com

O c to b er Alabama National Fair Garrett Coliseum; www.alnationalfair.org Riverfront Arts & Food Festival Activities include over 100 exhibitors, a young artists gallery for the kids, special performances for children and lots of food; Riverfront Park; www.festivalinthepark.com

July Stars on the Riverfront Riverfront Amphitheater; www.visitingmontgomery.com

December Montgomery Holiday Parade - Floats in the parade include local school groups, local dance/gymnastic groups, civic organizations and local high school & college bands; Dexter Avenue; www.visitingmontgomery.com Kwanzaa - Celebration of the African American tradition; Montgomery and Selma; www.soulofamerica.com/ events/kwanzaa-celebrations/

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Welcome To

Mobile

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History of Mobile

L

ike most of early America, Mobile History begins with Native Americans welcoming European explorers, then unsuccessfully defending their land against European settlers.

In 1519, Spaniard Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, with four ships, sails from Jamaica to explore the northern Gulf Coast. Among his discoveries are the River and Bay of Espiritu Santo, identifiable as Mobile River and Mobile Bay. Pineda remains forty days in a large Indian village at the mouth of the river, trading with the natives while repairing his ships. In 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez, in a fleet of makeshift boats, coasts by the mouth of Mobile Bay. He contacts, trades with, and fights local Indians, who are mainly fishermen.

Between 1685-1693, in response to the threat of French presence on the Gulf Coast, the Spanish, based in northern Florida, commission reconnaissance, which resulted in the re-exploration of Mobile Bay. But a settlement did not ensue immediately. By 1699, the French colony of Louisiana is established.

The main settlement is first at Biloxi, then later moved to 27-mile bluff on the Mobile River. The French explore Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, and the Mobile River Delta, establishing friendly relations with the native inhabitants.

The City of Mobile was founded in 1702 by the French in their bid for American Empire. In 1711, the settlement moved to its present location where the Mobile River and Mobile Bay meet, making it an important center for the Louisiana Territory.

One of the principal streets in the new settlement was Dauphin, named for the son of King Louis XIV. Under the Spaniards who ruled from 1780-1813 the street was St. John or Galvez Street. When Americans took possession of the land in 1813, the street was renamed Dauphin.

In 1762, the English blockaded Mobile Bay and seized the land. France ceded Louisiana to Spain, but the English held on to Mobile. Next year, the French Government signed the Treaty of Paris by which Mobile was organized as a part of British West Florida.

Since the founding of the city to 1800, Mobile had imported a significant share of the 1 million Africans brought to America for slavery. As a major port on the Gulf of Mexico, most Africans imported here were targeted at the thriving cotton and rice plantations of Alabama. European American citizens enjoyed wealth from all the commerce, as the city’s principal commercial corridor, Dauphin Street acquired a national reputation for exceptional quality. In 1806 the oldest Black church in lower Alabama and one of the oldest in America was founded, Stone Street Baptist Church.

Though interrupted by a great fire in 1839, Mobile enjoyed prosperity from 1815-1861 as the second largest international seaport on the Gulf Coast. Cotton, rice and lumber growing centers in Mississippi and Alabama shipped those commodities down river for exportation at the Port of Mobile. An excellent location in lower Mobile Bay for vessels requiring deep anchorage, the number of wharves increases to more than forty.

Further driving the engine of commerce was the completion of the Mobile and Ohio railroad during this period.

Plans for the settlement of La Mobile - 1702

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In 1860, a ship called the Clotilde carrying 116 African slaves sailed into the Mobile harbor.

Though slavery was legal in the South at that time, importing slaves had been barred since 1808, making the ship’s arrival a breach of federal law. Some assert that the ship’s captain transferred slaves from the ship into Mobile, others contend that the crew abandoned ship.

All agree the Clotilde was burned and sunk to hide the crime.

A handful of those Africans escaped bondage to settle in Magazine Point, which was considered undesirable swamp land near Mobile. Today, their descendants call the area Africatown. Its cemetery has the graves of Clotilde’s descendants’ and all of the headstones face the Bay, as if gazing toward that ship.

Due to its highly fortified entrance to Mobile Bay, staunch military leadership and location on a bluff, in 1865 Mobile was the last major Confederate city to surrender to Union forces during the Civil War.

Cemetery located in Africatown, Alabama The Church Street District is a historic Black neighborhood, the Henry Aaron Loop, named after the native Mobilian and official MLB All-time Home Run King, encircles the downtown area.

Old Patton Hall belonged to one of the wealthiest Black families in Mobile. There are several noteworthy cemeteries including the Veteran’s and Church Street Cemeteries, two of the oldest containing the remains of many Civil War veterans, Joe Cain, and several Buffalo Soldiers. And the

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old Central High School, now called Bishop State Community College, stands as one of 14 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the state.

Mobile seemed to be less affected by the Civil Rights Movement. That is not to say that Mobile lacked racial issues, rather that the city had less extreme racial issues due to its location at the southern tip of the state and racially diverse maritime commerce after the Civil War. Some long-time residents say that during the Civil Rights Movement, many prominent Black Mobilians disagreed with the methods utilized to bring about social change. Moreover, it has been said that at one time Dr. King wanted to speak in Mobile, but a group of local Black clergy composed a letter asking him not to come. They believed that his methods were too divisive for their community. In all likelihood their real fear was violent repercussions like the Civil Rights Movement experienced in Birmingham and Montgomery.

Today, African Americas have become a political force in Mobile. from the President of the City Council, to the County Commission, School Board, and Chief of Police and Convention & Visitors Bureau. More brothers and sisters are returning to live here.

Mobile Cultural Sites National African-American Archives Museum Housed in the Davis Avenue Branch of the Mobile Public Library built in 1931, the museum covers numerous contributions African Americans have made to Mobile and the voyage of the last known illegal slave ship, the Clotilde, which docked in Mobile in 1859; Mobile’s rich, culturally diverse history has produced such famous personalities as Hank Aaron, the former Major League Baseball home run leader, and U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, which are both represented in the museum’s collection, as well as African American carvings, Indonesian fabrics, the James Bivens Collection, the History of the Colored Carnival (Mardi Gras), showcases of African royalties, a “Remember When” exhibit, a 7-piece lavatory set, and numerous other interesting memorabilia; the building designed by the famed George Bigelow Rogers, is an artifact itself; listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Hank Aaron Stadium Mobile has an incredible baseball tradition and is the home of the Mobile BayBears farm team of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Built in 1997, this 6,000 seat stadium includes a Hall of Fame Circle with monuments to namesake Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige, Willie McCovey, Billy Williams and Ozzie Smith, all born in Mobile and inducted into the Major League Baseball Baseball Hall of Fame. The stadium is unique in that the luxury suites are at field level, while infield seating for the general public is elevated by twenty feet. In a nice touch, Hank Aaron’s childhood home was moved to the stadium grounds in 2010 and serves as de facto museum. It is renovated into a museum that highlights Aaron’s accomplishments on the field, his family and baseball in Mobile

Bishop State Black History Museum Bishop State’s Central Campus is located on the site of the Old Central High School; contains artifacts of early Black Mobilians and focuses on the development of Davis Avenue; artifacts, manuscripts, audio and visual arts are on display.

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Mobile’s Historic Sites

Slave Market Site // St. Louis Street at Royal Street Since the cities founding a century slave-holders met to trade slaves for commerce on this site.

Though federal legislation officially ended the importation of slaves in 1808, there were flagrant violations of the law until 1860. Slave trade remained very active in Mobile for decades longer.

Hawthorne House // 352 Stanton Road Built in 1853, the house — a rather simply detailed Gulf Coast Cottage — was occupied by the Reverend Joshua Kedar Hawthorne, a White minister who moved to Mobile from Conecuh County where he reputedly worked with free Black churches.

Mobile Public Library // 564 Davis Avenue Built in 1931 to serve the needs of the African American community the Davis Avenue branch library is a small-scale version of the local public library. It reflects a social climate where African Americans were provided with separate educational facilities.

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Mount Vernon Arsenal-Searcy Hospital Complex // Coy Smith Highway Called Fort Stoddert in 1799, it was renamed Mt. Vernon Arsenal in 1828. During the Civil War it was seized by Confederate troops, but was returned to the federal government after the war. Later the state legislature established Mt. Vernon Hospital to relieve overcrowding at Bryce Hospital, the state psychiatric facility. Mt. Vernon was designated exclusively for the care of the African-American mentally ill, until it was desegregated in 1969.

Africatown // Union Missionary Baptist Church, Plateau, AL The heritage of a people brought from the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa to Mobile on a slave ship still lives on in Africatown.

This area, about 3 miles north of Mobile, received its name because of its African population and culture. On the night of July 9, 1860, the slave ship Clotilde, headed by Captain William Foster, entered Mobile Harbor. Due to the outlaw of African slave trade since 1808, Captain Foster had to transfer the slaves from the ship into a riverboat to bring them into Mobile. He then burned and sunk the Clotilde. Once sold to those interested in the Clotilde expedition, these enslaved Africans–intelligent, hardworking and industrious people — created their own neighborhood at Magazine Point, a community that still lives on today. In fact, many descendants of Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, the last survivor of the Clotilde, still reside here and a bust of him sits in front.

Hunter House // 503 St. Francis Street This two-story Italianate home matches in scale, character and architectural detail White owned Mobile residences of the period. It is also significant for its association with Bettie Hunter, an affluent 19th-century Black business woman.

Bragg-Mitchell Mansion // 1906 Springhill Avenue Built in 1855, the Bragg family split their time between this Mansion and their cotton plantation in Lowndes County outside of Montgomery.

Judge Bragg died in 1878, and four additional families have owned the home since his passing.

The last private owner was the A.S. Mitchell family who purchased the home and property in 1931 and occupied it until 1965 — during that time, the Mansion became an icon of the city.

This restored twenty room mansion is adorned with period furnishings, artwork, double parlors, a lavish dining room, stenciled moldings and grounds with Mobile’s trademark live oaks and azaleas. Given its construction period and location, a number of Black craftsmen were involved in building this National Historic Landmark.

Whistler // Area surrounding Whistler Street and Wasson Avenue, Whistler, AL Alabama’s largest historically Black town with a number of historic sites.

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Mobile’s Places of Worship State Street AME Church // 502 State Street Constructed in 1854, this church is one of the most imposing antebellum structures built for a Black congregation in Alabama. It is also one of the oldest AME churches established in the city prior to the Civil War.

Stone Street Baptist Church // 311 Tunstall Street The congregation’s history dates back to 1806, and the church was redesigned in 1931 at the height of the Depression by laymen who made inventive use of limited resources.

Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church // 2756 Old Shell Road Another of the Pre-Civil War Black churches in Mobile and the oldest Missionary Baptist church in the city

St. Louis Street Missionary Baptist Church // 108 North Dearborn Street One of four Black congregations established in Alabama prior to 1865. The present building, completed in 1872, hosted the 1874 session of the Colored Baptist Convention which voted to establish Selma University Big Zion AME Zion Church // 112 South Bayou Street Built in 1842, the church was first called Little Zion; it was renamed in1896, after extensive renovation and expansion added the current Romanesque and Gothic exterior.

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Union Missionary Baptist Church // 506 Bay Bridge Road Located in historic Africatown, the front of the church is home to the bust of Cudjoe Lewis, the last living descendant of the Clotilde slave ship.

Emmanuel AME Church // 656 St. Michael Street Built by Mobile architect James F. Hutchisson between 1881 and 1891, the building is representative of mid-19th century architecture, which took medieval building traditions as models.

Mobile Events

January GMAC Bowl - Annual football game featuring a series of events leading up to the big game; Ladd Peebles Stadium; www.gmacbowl.com Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration of the life of the civil rights leader; Mobile; www.kingraleigh.org/ natlevent/body.cfm Mardi Gras - Mobile’s first Mardi Gras celebration dates back to 1703 and includes parades and Mardi Gras Balls; www.mardigrasmobile.com Mobile Senior Bowl - The Senior Bowl is the nation’s most unique football game and one of football’s premier pre-draft event features senior collegiate football players on teams representing the North and the South and an NFL scouting confab; LaddPeebles Stadium; www.seniorbowl.com

October BayFest - Blues, rock, country, alternative, gospel, bluegrass, Zydeco and more wash over you for three beautiful Fall days and nights, with over 100 national and local acts on 7 stages; Downtown Mobile; www.bayfest.com National Shrimp Festival - Annual festival for the past 32 years; featuring wonderful seafood, fine arts, musical entertainment, an International Marketplace, Children’s Art Village and more; Gulf Shores Alabama Public Beach; www.nationalshrimpfestival.com Greater Gulf State Fair - Annual fair featuring musical entertainment, food, carnival rides, petting zoo and more; Mobile; www.mobilefair.com

December Kwanzaa - Annual celebration of the African American traditions and values; Mobile; www.soulofamerica. com/events/kwanzaa-celebrations/

February Black History Month - Various events celebrating Black History www.mobile.org

April Arts Alive! - Cathedral Square Arts District offers three days of varied artistic experiences and interactive and hands-on activities; www.artsalivemobile.com

May Dauphin Island Arts Festival Juried fine art festival at Cadillac Square Park on Dauphin Island; www.dauphinislandcoc.com Gulf Coast Zydeco Music & Crawfish Festival - Zydeco bands, Creole/Cajun food, free dance instruction, a parade, vendors and more.

June

Juneteenth - Annual celebration of African American culture; Mobile; www.juneteenth.com or www.cityofmobile.org Jazz Jambalaya - Salute to jazz greats at Gulf City Lodge at 601 State Street; www.mojomobile.multiply.com

August Gulf Coast Ethnic & Heritage Jazz Festival - Featuring great jazz music, an evening of poetry, food and more; several Mobile locations; www.gcehjazzfest.com

November Mobile International Festival - An indoor educational and cultural event representing over 60 countries and emphasizing four areas: cuisine, continuous entertainment on two stages, cultural booths and handson-art; Mobile Convention Center; www.mobileinternationalfestival.org

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Welcome To

Selma

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Selma Attractions National Voting Rights Museum & Institute // 1012 Water Avenue Near the foot of Edmund Pettus Bridge, the museum houses exhibits on the people and events that brought about voting rights for all Americans, regardless of race, education, or income. It includes exhibits on “Bloody Sunday,” AfricanAmericans in government and memorials to those who died during the struggle. It hosts the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee in March. Take the see the historic civil rights sites of Selma and have lunch with a history-maker. The Bed & Breakfast Tour for $100 per night lets you spend the night in the home of a history-maker, then listen to their stories.

Selma University // 1501 Lapsley Street Founded by the Alabama Colored Baptist Convention in 1866 to train ministers and Christian teachers, it is oldest traditional black junior college in the U.S.

Tabernacle Baptist Church // 1431 Broad Street Established in 1894, this church was the site of the first mass meeting on voting rights in 1964 hosted by Rev. L. L. Anderson, when others were afraid to do so; prior to 1st mass meeting, this was the site of training for non-violent protests; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Baldwin also spoke here Brown YMCA // 1133 Minter Avenue Formed in 1947 as Selma’s first Black branch of the YMCA.

Slavery & Civil War Museum // 1410 Water Ave. Opened in 2002, and provides written, oral, and visual displays and of the history of slavery and the Civil War. It includes a traveling 52-piece art collection “Middle Passage” by Tom Feelings.

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Brown Chapel AME Church & Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Statue // 410 Martin Luther King St. Brown Chapel was organized by freed men in 1866 after the Civil War. The current edifice by a Black architect A.J. Farley, was built in 1908 and is noted for its imposing twin towers and Romanesque Revival exterior. With its proximity to downtown and Edmond Pettus Bridge, this church was the staging ground for the historic Selma to Montgomery Marches of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite a ban on protest marches by Governor George Wallace, the first march led by SCLC’s Hosea Williams and SNCC’s John Lewis took place on 7 March 1965, known as “Bloody Sunday” — 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas 6 blocks away on Edmond Pettus Bridge. John Lewis’ skull was fractured in the melee as many white onlookers cheered. When national TV programming was interrupted that night to showcase the events, the nation’s disapproving eyes finally gazed upon the Selma and other civil rights marches.

The second march took place on 9 March 1965 but was halted at the bridge for fear of death — even though national news cameras were there; on 21 March 1965, after Governor Wallace’s ban was overruled by Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., only the third march led by Dr. King, Aberbernathy, Hosea Williams, John Lewis, interfaith ministers and a host of celebrities and made it to Montgomery, 51 miles away 5 days later. As the meeting place and offices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Selma Movement the church played a major role in leading to the adoption of the Voting Rights Act of August 1965. A monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dedicated in front of the chapel in 1979.

Old Depot Museum // 4 Martin Luther King St. Housed in the old L & N Railroad Depot at the foot of historic Water Avenue, the museum depicts life in Selma from 1820 to the present; a tour of the museum runs the gamut from Civil War to Civil Rights.

Dallas County Courthouse // 105 Lauderdale St. Destination of most Selma protest marches for voting rights.

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Edmund Pettus Bridge and Civil Rights Memorial Park // Broad Street at Water Avenue Named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a Confederate general and U.S. senator from this city. The bridge is famous during the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery where marchers were violently attacked by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the bridge on 7 March 1965. That day is known as “Bloody Sunday.” On Sunday 21 March 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led 600 marchers across this bridge, by the time it successfully concluded in Montgomery, the numbers swelled to 25,000, whom Dr. King addressed from the steps of the Alabama State Capitol. The memorial park includes murals, memorials, and walking path to commemorate the struggle for voting and civil rights.

Old City Hall // 1300 Alabama Avenue Served as a city and county jail in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other protestors were jailed in 1965.

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Welcome To

Tuskegee

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History of Tuskegee

T

uskegee is a city in Macon County, Alabama, United States. It was founded and laid out in 1833 by General Thomas Simpson Woodward, a Creek War veteran under Andrew Jackson, and made the county seat that year. It was incorporated in 1843. It is also the largest city in Macon County. At the 2010 census the population was 9,865, down from 11,846 in 2000.

Tuskegee has been an important site in African-American history and highly influential in United States history since the 19th century.

Before the American Civil War, the area was largely used as a cotton plantation, dependent on African-American slave labor. After the war, many freedmen continued to work on plantations in the rural area, which was devoted to agriculture. In 1881 the Tuskegee Normal School (now Tuskegee University, a historically black college) was founded by Lewis Adams, a former slave whose father, Jesse Adams, a slave owner, allowed him to be educated, and its first, founding principal was, Booker T. Washington who developed a national reputation and philanthropic network to support education of freedmen and their children.

In 1923, the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center was established here, initially for the estimated 300,000 African-

American veterans of World War I in the South, when public facilities were racially segregated.

Twenty-seven buildings were constructed on the 464-acre campus.

The city was the subject of a notable civil rights case, Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature had violated the Fifteenth Amendment in 1957 by gerrymandering city boundaries as a 28-sided figure that excluded nearly all black voters and residents, and none of the white voters or residents. The city’s boundaries were restored in 1961 after the ruling.

The area was settled by European Americans in the 1830s after the Creek Native American tribes had been removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Pioneer planters brought or purchased African-American slaves to develop the rich soil for cotton plantations, as short-staple cotton was the chief commodity crop through the 19th century. Invention of the cotton gin at the end of the 18th century meant that this type of cotton could be processed profitably and it was adaptable to the upland areas. Designated as the county seat of rural Macon County, Tuskegee developed as its only city.

In 1881, the young Booker T. Washington was hired to develop the Tuskegee Normal

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History Class at the Tuskegee Institute School for Colored Teachers on the grounds of a former plantation. It was founded to train teachers for the segregated school system and freedmen for self-sufficiency. Washington established a work-study program by which students practiced skills and trades. Over the

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decades, the programs were expanded. This was later named the Tuskegee Institute. Graduate courses were added and it became Tuskegee University. Washington was known for his emphasis on education and self-improvement.

The institute became known for stressing a practical education with work experience by students, to prepare them for the work available in the small towns and rural areas to which most would return. Teaching was a highly respected calling, as education was a major goal among the freedmen and their children. Washington believed that African Americans would achieve acceptance by southern whites when they had raised themselves.

Washington led the school for decades, building a wide national network of white industrialist donors among some of the major philanthropists of the era, including George Eastman. At the same time, Washington secretly provided funding to the NAACP for its legal defense of some highly visible civil rights cases,

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(1946 – 1958), he achieved accreditation for a medical residency program at the hospital.

He also worked to ensure accessibility for graduates to good medical positions in the federal government.

In the 1930s, a group of black men from the Tuskegee Men’s Club began efforts to get more black voters registered. Beginning in 1941, the group reorganized under the name the Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA). With the group’s consistent effort to register more voters, the area’s statistics about registered black voters continued to increase. The group

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and potential voters were often met with obstacles that prevented them from being successful. The surrounding black community showed support and wanted to recognize black leaders in the community. The work of the TCA also had a huge emphasis on educating their communities on various civic duties. Though the existing support for the TCA was not often vocalized, many black community members wanted to challenge the political system that was present in Macon County. The group shed a light on the disparities in the numbers of black people applying for voter registration and those who were successful, even going as far as talking to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, activists had made progress in registering black voters in the city. African Americans in Tuskegee and other Alabama cities had been largely disenfranchised after passage of a new state constitution in 1901, which had requirements that were discriminatory in practice, such as poll tax and literacy tests.

In 1957 the 400 registered black voters nearly equaled white voters; a total of 1000 voters were registered. But African Americans in the city outnumbered whites on a four-to-one basis; among them were many highly educated, professional African Americans working at

Tuskegee and the VA hospital. That year, without debate and against the protests of many African Americans, the state legislature redefined the boundaries of the city; it enacted Local Law 140, creating an irregular, 28-sided city boundary that excluded 420 black voters from the city, leaving only ten black voters within the redefined boundaries. Those excluded included the entire professional staffs of the Institute and the hospital. No white voters were excluded by the change.

The law was intended to guarantee that minority whites could retain control of the city even if more blacks succeeded in the arduous process of registering to vote. Some 3,000 African American residents protested passage of the law at a church in Tuskegee; they also began an economic boycott of white businesses in the city. The boycott was referred to as a “selective buying campaign” due to the fact that boycotting was illegal under state law. It lasted about four years, during which twentysix businesses operated by white proprietors closed down.

African Americans also organized to challenge the law in court, in a case supported by the NAACP. The law was initially upheld

by the US District Court and affirmed by the Appeals Court based in New Orleans. Known as Gomillion v. Lightfoot, it was decided by the US Supreme Court in 1960, with the ruling implemented in 1961. The court ruled that the gerrymandering of city boundaries was racially motivated and violated the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which states that “states were not insulated from federal judicial review when they jeopardized federally protected rights.“ The exclusionary gerrymandering was overturned and the city restored to its previous boundaries.

This case was cited in the later Baker v.

Carr (1964), in which the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s malapportionment of election districts violated civil rights. It ruled that representation in both houses of all state legislatures had to be based on population, under the “one man, one vote” doctrine, and that such districts had to be regularly updated to reflect population changes.

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Pan African American Travel Club

www.panafricanamericantravel.net

Our Mission The Pan African American Travel Club celebrates the culture and history of the people of the African Diaspora. The African Diaspora being defined as people of African descent in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and North America. The Pan African American Travel Club was developed to educate, assist and encourage cultural heritage travelers to explore the rich and vibrant cultures of Pan Africa!

The Art, the Food, and the Music are unequal in their creativity and excellence! Go See Pan Africa!!

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Want To Find The Best Prices for Your Hotel or Resort? Look No Further!

Click, Clack. Click Clack. Oh, don’t mind the noise – that’s just me aimlessly tapping on my laptops keyboard. Like most Americans when we get ready to book our travel plans for hotel / resorts we visit several booking portals to find the best deals. Wow! Look at all those different hotel/ resort booking portals just to find the best hotel/ resort deals.

How is this happening? The travel and tourism industry is one of the world’s largest industries with a global economic contribution (direct, indirect and induced) of over 7.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2016. But the biggest development is that travel sites keep swallowing one another with the avarice - extreme greed for wealth or material gain.

This can’t be, eight sites and just two prices?

Why is that? It’s simple really! What I have learned is the members of the general public book their hotels on the Internet through an Online Travel Agency (OTA) such as Expedia, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Priceline.com, Trivago, TripAdvisor and others. There are hundreds of them. But did you know just two companies, Expedia and Priceline, own most of them! Accordingly, public pricing is generally the same from website to website. Try it for yourself.

Search for the same hotel on Hotels.com and Expedia and Orbitz.com and you’ll find the pricing to be virtually the same.

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does it really matter which site you use? Your choice with any of these sites will run the gamut from A to B. It’s not worth an all-day search to find the best hotel deal.

So how do you decide who to book your hotel / resort through? You’re in luck! We have found one of the best booking portals, so you don’t have to.

Now that we know the major players in online travel booking own most of the other booking sites. This is not a complete list but here are some highlights of whom owns who: • Expedia Inc. • Owns Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire. com, Venere.com, TripAdvisor.com — plus TripAdvisor • Subsidiaries • CruiseCritic.com, BookingBuddy.com, SmarterTravel. com, SeatGuru.com, AirfareWat chdog.com, and IndependentTraveler. com.

The Pan African American Travel Club was developed to educate, assist and encourage cultural heritage travelers to explore the rich and vibrant cultures of Pan Africa! The Art, the Food, and the Music are unequal in their creativity and excellence! To encourage our Pan Africa travelers. So, Pan Africa created the Pan African American Travel Club. We searched for partners that will give our travelers the opportunity to travel to experience luxury travel at the lowest prices possible.

Pan African American Travel Club has partnered with LifeTRNDS to provide private pricing not available to the public on hotel and resorts around the world. You get to use a $40 million hotel and resort booking travel technology platform and use it like as if you owned it yourself.

As a LifeTRNDS subscriber, you will enjoy private pricing on hotel and resorts around the world.

International Stay - One Week

• Orbitz Worldwide • Owns Orbitz.com, CheapTickets.com, and RatestoGo.com • Sabre Holdings Inc. • Owns Travelocity.com, IgoUgo.com, LastMinute.com and the gigantic Sabre reservations system used by the travel industry. Travelocity also powers the search on Yahoo! Travel.

• Priceline.com Inc. • Owns Priceline.com, Travelweb.com, and Lowestfare.com.

In my experience, hotel prices vary more with the day, date or occupancy rate of a property rather than which booking site you use. So,

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PLAZA DELLA REPUBLICA, 47 ROME, IT 00187 Public Price - $2,503.22

Our Price - $1,946.04 SAVE - $557.18

The Pan African American Travel Club, a LifeTRNDS advocate, has partnered with LifeTRNDS to provide wholesale pricing on hotels and resorts around the world. It will only cost you a small subscriber fee of 39.95. In addition, you can save on everyday purchases with our daily shopping discounts and cashback opportunities.

The subscription will also provide you an opportunity to join our network and support our work by becoming a LifeTRND Advocate. All the information you will need to decide is on a short video. Should you elect not to join, we have a Free Gift for you. A GIFT Card that offers you up to $1000 in Savings on your travel needs. No Strings attached! It is Free!

Not Traveling Yet? We also offer you savings on everyday purchases with our daily shopping discounts, attractions, events, dinning, cash back opportunities, and much more.

Visit Us Today lifetrnds.com/paatc

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‘The South’

African American Cultural Heritage Tourism and Travel Resource Links - Click Each Image To View

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Southern Cultural Heritage Trails Links Alabama

Georgia

Louisiana

Black Tourism

African American History

African American Heritage Trail

Mississippi Civil Rights Trail Itinerary

Georgia Civil Rights Trail

Arkansas

Kentucky Mississippi Freedom Trail

Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail

Kentucky Civil Rights Trail Civil Rights Markers in Mississippi

Arkansas Black History

Florida

Florida Black History

Kentucky Civil Rights Trail Civil Rights Archives

Kentucky Center For African American Heritage

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North Carolina

North Carolina Civil Rights Trail

African-American History In North Carolina

African-American History Across North Carolina

Texas

Explore Texas’ African American History

Texas Time Travel

African Americans

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South Carolina

South Carolina Civil Rights History

SC African-American History and Culture

Black History

Virginia

Virginia Civil Rights Trail

African American Historic Sites

Tennessee

Tennessee’s Stops on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail

My Tennessee Trip Planner

Places in Tennessee to Explore African American History

The Pan African Cultural Heritage Media marketing and advertising program offers advertising options across many media channels including website, e-Newsletter, digital magazine, contests, social and more. We pride ourselves on being partners with our advertisers and consulting with them to meet their unique business needs throughout the entire process.

Increase your marketing impact by taking advantage of the low-cost/high value advertising opportunities to reach a prestigious audience on a global scale. Maximize your visibility by promoting your business or service in the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Market Place suite of advertisement platforms.

African Network TV The Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute YouTube Channel (‘The Tube’) is an educational and cultural heritage awareness promotional platform that was developed in partnership with the Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute and African Network TV of Gainesville, Florida.

Edutainment is the primary intent of the videos shared on ‘The Tube”.

The Pan African Culture and History is “Rich” and Robust! Neglected and abused by others for personal gain, confusion exists on what is true. Using the knowledge and research of educators, historians, researchers, artisans, and the expertise and relationship of ANTV, the Institute is excited about the opportunities that lies ahead. Become a supporter of the ‘Tube’ by joining the Pan African Cultural Heritage Society as a member. We are dedicated in our efforts to promote the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Initiative, by sharing the culture and history of Pan Africa. Share!

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Mobile Events

January GMAC Bowl - Annual football game featuring a series of events leading up to the big game; Ladd Peebles Stadium; www.gmacbowl.com Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration of the life of the civil rights leader; Mobile; www.kingraleigh.org/ natlevent/body.cfm Mardi Gras - Mobile’s first Mardi Gras celebration dates back to 1703 and includes parades and Mardi Gras Balls; www.mardigrasmobile.com Mobile Senior Bowl - The Senior Bowl is the nation’s most unique football game and one of football’s premier pre-draft event features senior collegiate football players on teams representing the North and the South and an NFL scouting confab; LaddPeebles Stadium; www.seniorbowl.com

October BayFest - Blues, rock, country, alternative, gospel, bluegrass, Zydeco and more wash over you for three beautiful Fall days and nights, with over 100 national and local acts on 7 stages; Downtown Mobile; www.bayfest.com National Shrimp Festival - Annual festival for the past 32 years; featuring wonderful seafood, fine arts, musical entertainment, an International Marketplace, Children’s Art Village and more; Gulf Shores Alabama Public Beach; www.nationalshrimpfestival.com Greater Gulf State Fair - Annual fair featuring musical entertainment, food, carnival rides, petting zoo and more; Mobile; www.mobilefair.com

December Kwanzaa - Annual celebration of the African American traditions and values; Mobile; www.soulofamerica. com/events/kwanzaa-celebrations/

February Black History Month - Various events celebrating Black History www.mobile.org

April Arts Alive! - Cathedral Square Arts District offers three days of varied artistic experiences and interactive and hands-on activities; www.artsalivemobile.com

May Dauphin Island Arts Festival Juried fine art festival at Cadillac Square Park on Dauphin Island; www.dauphinislandcoc.com Gulf Coast Zydeco Music & Crawfish Festival - Zydeco bands, Creole/Cajun food, free dance instruction, a parade, vendors and more.

June

Juneteenth - Annual celebration of African American culture; Mobile; www.juneteenth.com or www.cityofmobile.org Jazz Jambalaya - Salute to jazz greats at Gulf City Lodge at 601 State Street; www.mojomobile.multiply.com

August Gulf Coast Ethnic & Heritage Jazz Festival - Featuring great jazz music, an evening of poetry, food and more; several Mobile locations; www.gcehjazzfest.com

November Mobile International Festival - An indoor educational and cultural event representing over 60 countries and emphasizing four areas: cuisine, continuous entertainment on two stages, cultural booths and handson-art; Mobile Convention Center; www.mobileinternationalfestival.org

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When we started as an online hobby in 1997, general travel media only listed a handful of black heritage sites in New York City, Washington and Atlanta.

Inspired by our lead, general travel media now include African-American sites in every hamlet, but not as well as us.

Though African-American travelers are our primary market, SoulOfAmerica attracts visitors of all stripes who broaden their travel perspectives by exploring editorial, listings, photos, video and shared stories on cultural treasures with all the appreciation and in some cases, reverence they deserve. In that sense, visiting SoulOfAmerica to virtually sample AfricanAmerican culture is similar to visiting Chinatown to sample Chinese-American culture.

We have upgraded our international content, social media and mobile guides to ensure that we appeal to a broader range of demographics. Whether a quick visit or hour long dive into SoulOfAmerica, we promise that there are many insights and pleasant surprises to make your next trip more engaging.

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No matter how much I’ve learned over the years, that knowledge is increased while working on our Vacation Planning issue and Family Reunion Planning insert, two arduous projects that require a great deal of time, coordination and energy—much like our personal travel plans.

Weller, my husband and the publisher of Pathfinders, generally makes all of our travel arrangements, and can spend hours searching various websites, calling hotels, attractions, and airlines before finally booking a trip. (I humbly admit the couple of times I made flight arrangements; I booked the tickets for the wrong date.)

Travel takes a coordination of efforts by those going on the trip, and/or the resources of a good travel agent. Now, I research as much as I can about the destination before departure. We travel often with our granddaughter who, like a typical 7-year-old, is full of questions about the journey, destination, people and even the food. It keeps us on our toes as we sometimes have to scramble to the internet or library to find the answer—which is okay, because it helps us to continue seeing the world with profound appreciation.

And isn’t that what travel is supposed to be about? As you read the March issue, the stories on dining in Virginia, cultures of Vancouver and Antigua, adventure in North Carolina, or the women artist of Haiti, it is my hope that you enjoy them with the wonderment and appreciate each writer felt while discovering them.

The family reunion information was culled from volunteers who tirelessly work to research the genealogy while taking on the awesome task of planning these family gatherings with a minimum of resources.

The Pathfinders Reunions Online is also a work in progress, and we invite you to visit (www.pathfinderstravel.com) to share your photos, suggestions and questions with this new community. And of course, we want to hear about your vacation plans. With the economy and fuel prices taking us on a reluctant ride of its own, tell us if your travel plans have changed because of the economy, and especially if you’ve canceled an international vacation, beach house rental or other plans.

Drop me a line at editors@pathfinderstravel.com, I’d love to hear from you.

It’s a Wonderful Word! Step on the Path and Let’s See It Together.

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Black Meetings & Tourism was established in 1994.

We are an award winning, international, full color, Bi-monthly trade publication for and about the $40 billion plus African-American group and leisure travel, incentives and meetings market.

In addition, we are a valuable resource for all your business and leisure travel needs and through our focal and supplemental publications, also provide vital information about professional accomplishments, achievements, career opportunities, and cultural events related to the Travel, Meetings and Hospitality, industries.

As an African-American owned publishing company, we are dedicated to serving and supporting the African-American travel segment as well as providing an opportunity to all businesses, service providers, and affiliates that want to reach this emerging market.

According to the Travel Industry of America (TIA), the African-American segment of the U.S. population represents one of the fastest growing markets in the travel industry

African Diaspora Tourism (ADT) is an online magazine dedicated to exploring the culture, heritage, places and influences of people of African descent, past and present around the globe. The ADT web site highlights information on how people of color, living all over the world as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and modern-day migration, are continuously shaping the cultures of North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, as well as Africa.

ADTs major objective is to enlighten and inspire cultural and heritage tourism through up-to-date information, compelling first-person travel articles, candid images, and scholarly research. In addition to bringing you a first-rate travel journal about the people and places of the global African Diaspora, ADT is committed to supporting sustainable tourism and preserving the culture and heritage in the places we explore.

With studies showing that people more now than ever are looking to learn about and immerse themselves in the history and culture of the places they visit, we feel that this project is a timely, worthwhile endeavor that serves to meet the needs of travelers, culture enthusiasts, and professionals.

Become A Member

Pan African Cultural Heritage Society MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS AND LEVELS Business and Community Organization members will be listed in the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace online business membership directory for one year from date of membership approval and will be included in and have full access to the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace. Individual members will be listed in the online “Who’s Who” membership directory for one year from date of membership approval and will be able to access the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace.

Benefits: One year Free Subscription to each of the membership e-magazines.

Business/Professional Membership........................................................... $100.00 a year Community Organization Membership....................................................... $50.00 a year Individual Membership.................................................................................. $25.00 a year

Click Here For Membership Application 61

Become A Sponsor Gold Level Sponsorship

Silver Level Sponsorship

Bronze Level Sponsorship

Corporate Level Sponsorship

$5000 Per Year

$3000 Per Year

$2000 Per Year

$1000 Per Year

Full page ad for one year in all membership e-magazines. Option to submit Advertorial in place of Quarterly Advertisement.

Half page ad for one year in all membership e-magazines. Option to submit Advertorial in place of Quarterly Advertisement.

Quarter page ad for one year in all membership e-magazines. Option to submit Advertorial in place of Quarterly Advertisement.

Company logo featured on “Sponsors Page” on Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace website for one year.

Company logo featured on “Sponsors Page” on Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace website for one year.

Company logo featured on “Sponsors Page” on Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace website for one year.

Corporate / Business Members’ names and/or logos will be placed on the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Marketplace Sponsorship Page for one year from date of membership approval.

The company will be invited to promote products/services at all appropriate events for a year for free with the first choice of vendor location.

The company will be invited to promote products/services at all appropriate events for one year at a discounted rate.

The company will have priority choice for vendor location.

The company will be invited to promote products/services at all appropriate events for one year at a discounted rate.

Certificate of appreciation.

One year Free Subscription to each of the membership e-magazines.

Certificate of appreciation.

Certificate of appreciation.

Certificate of appreciation.

Click Here For Sponsorship Application 62

The Institute’s E – Magazines

Advertise In Our Quarterly Membership E-Magazines

The Pan African Cultural Heritage Alliance offers advertising options across many media channels including website, e-Newsletter, digital magazine, contests, social and more. We pride ourselves on being partners with our advertisers and consulting with them to meet their unique business needs throughout the entire process.

Why Advertise?

• Inform the industry of your company, products & services • Increase brand awareness • Position your company, products & services in front of the Pan African Cultural Heritage Network • Increase awareness of the uniqueness of your services • Connect with over the Pan African Culture, globally

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Increase your marketing impact by taking advantage of the low-cost/ high-value advertising opportunities to reach a prestigious audience on a global scale. Maximize your visibility by promoting your business or service in the Pan African American Cultural Heritage Market Place suite of advertisement platforms.

E – Magazine Why Advertise?

• Associate your brand with the Pan African Culture Chambers of Commerce and Cultural Heritage movement.

• Position your company as a supporter of the Cultural Economics, Forgotten Communities, and Cultural Heritage Arts Programs.

• Digital publications will have a shelf readership life of over one year.

• Your advertisement will be positioned in an e-magazine that is filled with pertinent and informative articles, interviews, comments and more!

Advertising Rates • Full page.................................................................. $1000.00 • Half page.................................................................. $500.00 • Quarter page............................................................ $250.00

Ad Submission Specifications Please help ensure that we have all items needed to reproduce your ad with the highest possible quality, recommend at least 12 megapixels.

How To Send Files

Email completed advertising files to dbeckford.paachmp@gmail.com

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George Washington Carver - Tuskegee Institute

including supporting challenges to southern states’ discriminatory constitutions and practices that disenfranchised African Americans. Through the 1920s and 1930s, Washington worked with Julius Rosenwald and architects at the college to develop models for rural schools, to be used with Rosenwald’s matching funds to gain construction of more rural schools for black children in the South.

Beginning in 1932, the school was the site of the now-infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment (1932–1972), started to test treatments of the disease. With funding cut by the Great Depression, the Institute staff cut back on medications to treat the disease and studied the effects of untreated syphilis on patients and their partners. In addition, participants were not informed that treatment was available for their disease after antibiotics had been developed.

One of the most famous teachers at Tuskegee was George Washington Carver, whose name is synonymous with innovative

research into Southern farming methods and the development of hundreds of commercial products derived from regional crops, including peanuts and sweet potatoes.

During World War II, Tuskegee and Tuskegee Institute were also home to the famed Tuskegee Airmen. This was the first squadron of African-American pilots trained in the U.S. Military for service in that war.

The university in the 21st century is a center of excellence for African-American education.

The heart of the university has been designated as a National Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

The Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center was opened in 1923, authorized

by Congress. A total of 27 buildings were constructed on the 464-acre campus, which provided housing and a hospital to serve the needs of more than 300,000 African-American veterans in the South from World War I. It attracted doctors from top schools, such as Dr. Toussaint Tourgee Tildon, a graduate of Harvard Medical School. He was one of the first six African American doctors to work at the hospital; as director of the complex for 12 years

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Join a Society

Pan African Cultural Heritage Societies

About Pan African Cultural Heritage Societies The Pan African Cultural Heritage Society is a network of International, State, Regional, and Local Cooperatives whose mission is to increase mutual understanding between the people of African Descent in the United States; and the people of other countries, states, cities, cultures, ethnic groups, and most important, the residents of the host community; by means of educational and cultural exchange, that assist in community and economic development.

What We Do Under the Management of the National Asset Building Coalition, Inc.; the Pan African Cultural Heritage Society Network supports and works to build cooperative relations and exchanges in Pan African Communities in the area of Commerce, Culture, Heritage, Education; recruiting People of Influence, Knowledge and Faith to join us in our cooperative efforts. Educational and Cultural Activities are used to build relations between the members of the Societies and the people of other countries through culture and heritage edutainment programs, art events, business and community development projects, academic and faith lectures, cultural sports, and professional exchanges, as well as public -private partnerships.

Who We Engage In an effort to celebrate the diversity of the People of African Descent, the Societies are open to all members of the host community and makes every effort to reflect the global society. Although our activities celebrate and focuses on the culture, heritage, traditions, and arts of Pan Africans for celebratory, educational and awareness purposes, all cultures are welcomed to become members and participate in Society activities.

How We Work We solicit artists, educators, athletes, students, business and faith community leaders to become local, state, and national Pan African Society Affiliates to share their cultural and heritage knowledge and skills with the host community and with other Pan African Cultural Heritage Societies around the globe, to include the general population, and seek cultural exchanges to help break down barriers that often divide Pan Africa and other cultures and nationalities.

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We Are Co-op The Pan African Cultural Heritage Society is a community centered alliance of International, Regional, State, and City Cooperatives.

A cooperative or co-operative is an autonomous association of people who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual social, economic, and cultural benefit. Cooperatives include non-profit community organizations and businesses that are owned and managed by the people who use its services or by the people who work there or by the people who live there, hybrids such as worker cooperatives that are also consumer cooperatives or credit unions, multi-stakeholder cooperatives such as those that bring together civil society and local actors to deliver community needs, and second and third tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives. The International Co-operative Alliance was the first international association formed by the movement. It includes the World Council of Credit Unions. A second organization was formed later in Germany, the International Raiffeisen Union. In the United States, the National Cooperative Business Association serves as the sector’s oldest national membership association.

The people and societies of the Pan African Cultural Heritage Society are constantly forming together in two major ways: through cultural engagement and by cultivating healthy Pan African Cultural Heritage Communities. We are active around across the United States and across the globe through various cooperative efforts, including a major community arts and educational collaborative mission.

We also assist communities with asset development research and cultural arts and community development projects; and connect these communities to global efforts, associated with the Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute, Inc. and the National Asset Building Coalition, Inc. network missions and efforts.

We cultivate healthy cooperative societies by connecting them to successful model societies and assist them in acquiring resources in support of each society individually and as a whole.

Conferences and workshop are held to assist in the development of cooperative/society members to encourage fellowship, interaction and foster society and membership growth.

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Tuskegee and the VA hospital. That year, without debate and against the protests of many African Americans, the state legislature redefined the boundaries of the city; it enacted Local Law 140, creating an irregular, 28-sided city boundary that excluded 420 black voters from the city, leaving only ten black voters within the redefined boundaries. Those excluded included the entire professional staffs of the Institute and the hospital. No white voters were excluded by the change.

The law was intended to guarantee that minority whites could retain control of the city even if more blacks succeeded in the arduous process of registering to vote. Some 3,000 African American residents protested passage of the law at a church in Tuskegee; they also began an economic boycott of white businesses in the city. The boycott was referred to as a “selective buying campaign” due to the fact that boycotting was illegal under state law. It lasted about four years, during which twentysix businesses operated by white proprietors closed down.

African Americans also organized to challenge the law in court, in a case supported by the NAACP. The law was initially upheld

by the US District Court and affirmed by the Appeals Court based in New Orleans. Known as Gomillion v. Lightfoot, it was decided by the US Supreme Court in 1960, with the ruling implemented in 1961. The court ruled that the gerrymandering of city boundaries was racially motivated and violated the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which states that “states were not insulated from federal judicial review when they jeopardized federally protected rights.“ The exclusionary gerrymandering was overturned and the city restored to its previous boundaries.

This case was cited in the later Baker v.

Carr (1964), in which the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s malapportionment of election districts violated civil rights. It ruled that representation in both houses of all state legislatures had to be based on population, under the “one man, one vote” doctrine, and that such districts had to be regularly updated to reflect population changes.

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Cities and Regional Cultural Heritage Societies Atlanta Cultural Heritage Society, Atlanta, Georgia

Montgomery Cultural Heritage Society, Montgomery, Alabama

Biloxi - Gulfport Cultural Heritage Society, Biloxi, Mississippi

New Orleans Cultural Heritage Society, New Orleans, Louisiana

Birmingham Cultural Heritage Society, Birmingham, Alabama

Northwest Florida Cultural Heritage Society, Napes - Sarasota - Ft. Myers, Florida

Daytona Beach Cultural Heritage Society, Daytona Beach, Florida

Savannah Cultural Heritage Society, Savannah, Georgia

Fort Lauderdale Cultural Heritage Society, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Southwest Florida Cultural Heritage Society, Napes - Sarasota - Ft. Myers, Florida

Florida Keys Cultural Heritage Society, Key West, Florida

Orlando Cultural Heritage Society, Orlando, Florida

Gainesville - Ocala Cultural Heritage Society, Gainesville, Florida

Pensacola Cultural Heritage Society, Pensacola, Florida

Jacksonville(La Villa Cultural Heritage Society), Jacksonville, Florida

Tallahassee Cultural Heritage Society, Tallahassee, Florida

Memphis Cultural Heritage Society, Memphis, Tennessee

Tampa - St. Petersburg Cultural Heritage Society, Tampa, Florida

Miami Cultural Heritage Society, Miami, Florida

West Palm Beach Cultural Heritage Society, West Palm Beach, Florida

Mobile Cultural Heritage Society, Mobile, Alabama

U.S. Territory Cultural Heritage Societies Puerto Rico Cultural Heritage Society

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Virgin Island Cultural Heritage Society

Publisher - Eugene Franklin Editor - Debbie Beckford Graphic Designer - Ryan Doughty Art Credit - Sonja Griffin Evans, Eric O’ Neal, Jean Pugh, Robert Rivera, Jorge Zapata, Konstantine Aal, Janine Robinson, David Mark, Clark Tibbs, SeppH, Christ Pruitt and David Brossard.

Photos - Staff, Public Domain, Flaticon and Pixabay.

Sources - Staff Writers, Wikipedia and Wikitravel.

Distributed By: Pan African Cultural Heritage Institute. Inc. National Cultural Heritage Tourism Center Inc. Florida Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. Mailing Address: 421 North Rues Street Pensacola, FL 32501 or Post Office Box 17743 Pensacola, Florida 32522-7743 To unsubscribe email gene_franklin@yahoo.com 70