Learn about the inspiring stories of Americans who fought for racial equality as you follow the new U.S. Civil Rights Trail, which launched in 2018 and includes 14 stops through Memphis, Nashville and Clinton, Tennessee. The whole family can learn something from a day on the trail and have some fun, too.

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Fisk University - Nashville

A good place to begin is Fisk University in Nashville, one of America’s great historically black colleges and universities. The university’s role in the struggle for racial equality is quite notable. Fisk students, with other young men and women from Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical College, were leaders of Nashville’s nonviolent protests and inspired a world-changing social justice movement.

Woolworth on 5th - Nashville

In the heart of downtown Nashville, Woolworth on 5th is now a restored restaurant and live music venue that pays homage to the early days of the civil rights movement. In 1960, it was the site of peaceful sit-ins by African-American students who challenged Woolworth and other stores that did not allow Black and white customers to eat at the same counter. While the sit-ins were peaceful, the reactions of some whites were not. This was the site of civil rights hero John Lewis’ first arrest in his lifelong fight for equality. 

Civil Rights Room - Nashville

In the airy, light-filled Civil Rights Room of Nashville’s downtown public library, you’ll find inspiring vintage photographs, documents, media reports and historic memorabilia that tell the story of Nashville’s epic civil rights movement. The painful struggle that included school integration, lunch counter sit-ins, marches and protests finally made Nashville the first integrated city in the South.

Griggs Hall at American Baptist College - Nashville

The basement of Nashville’s Griggs Hall at American Baptist College became legendary in the 1950s and ’60s. Here, much of the planning and organizing for Nashville’s lunch counter sit-ins and other protests was fine-tuned by the likes of Congressman John Lewis. It was in Griggs Hall that he famously asked, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”

Clayborn Temple - Memphis

For decades, this historic church building was the center of civil rights planning and organizing in Memphis. Clayborn Temple may be remembered best as the headquarters for the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike – the reason Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis when he was assassinated – that mobilized national sentiment. Currently, it is being restored to its rightful place in the pages of American history. Stop by to see I Am a Man Plaza, a new public space next to the temple.

National Civil Rights Museum - Memphis

The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis is the revered site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Established in 1991, the museum preserved the balcony where King was shot and the room in which he stayed, and offers state-of-the-art educational exhibits, multimedia presentations and comprehensive collections that take visitors through five centuries of history. The museum often features special events and speakers, too.

Mason Temple Church of God - Memphis

Many of the most dramatic moments in the story of the civil rights movement took place in churches. Some of the most significant sites include Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” the night before his assassination. Clark Memorial United Methodist Church has been called “the cradle of the civil rights movement in Nashville.” The gathering place for student activists, it was here they learned about the nonviolence philosophy successful protests.

Green McAdoo Cultural Center - Clinton

One morning in August 1956, 12 courageous young Black students quietly entered the front door of all-white Clinton High School, making it the first desegregated public high school in the South. The Green McAdoo Cultural Center, on the site of their old segregated school in Clinton, tells the dramatic story of the Clinton 12. A re-created 1950s classroom allows you to relive the students’ experiences of the Jim Crow era, and the life-size, bronze statues of the students in front of the center depict these brave young people on that fateful day.

Discover more stops on the Tennessee portion of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail

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

Your Memphis to Nashville Stops on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail

Your Nashville to Clinton Stops Along the U.S. Civil Rights Trail