Civil Rights Tours Draw in New Generations
The current political landscape is inspiring more people from the U.S. and abroad to visit the sites where the civil rights movement made history.
For decades, Tom Houck has taken people to landmarks of the civil rights movement—places where organizers strategized, demonstrators protested, and where both tragedy and triumph transpired. But it wasn’t until 2015 that the friend and aide to the late Martin Luther King Jr. established an official civil rights tour in his hometown of Atlanta.
Houck estimates that close to 20,000 people have taken his three-hour bus tour since the inception of Civil Rights Tours Atlanta, with about 40 percent of participants coming from out of town. He hosts weekly public and private tours of key civil rights sites like the Martin Luther King Jr. ...