About a Week
7 days · ~900 miles · from Memphis
Memphis to Birmingham through the movement's ground truth. The most important week in this atlas — built with rest stops, because it asks a lot.
This trip chains: The Blues Highway · The Civil Rights Trail
Starting in Memphis, this 7-day itinerary connects The Blues Highway and The Civil Rights Trail. It suits travellers interested in art towns, writers & folkways; battlefields, the movement & the past. The day-by-day bases let you split roughly 900 miles into a sequence of visits rather than trying to cover every linked route end to end. Use the daily highlights to decide which places deserve your longest stops.
Budget an average of about 129 miles per day across the whole trip, or roughly 2.9–4.3 hours behind the wheel at an assumed 30–45 mph back-roads pace. This is a planning estimate, not a measured time for each leg: transfer days can be longer and rest days shorter. Add meal stops, tours, ferries, traffic and hikes separately; use each day's navigation link for current driving estimates.
Use these day-end areas to plan lodging; the map pins are orientation points, not hotel recommendations. The final day can be your departure day.
Choose your dates around the experiences below rather than assuming one season fits the entire trip. These notes come from the linked route guides; check current forecasts and official schedules.
The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine — all morning, minimum. Then 61/49 south: the Sumner courthouse and Emmett Till Interpretive Center, Bryant's Grocery at Money. Overnight Greenwood.
Built into the Lorraine Motel, preserving Room 306 and the balcony where Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968. Start the whole trip here; everything south of Memphis echoes it.
The restored 1955 courthouse where the murderers were acquitted in 67 minutes, and where the county issued its formal apology in 2007. The center's guided story is the strongest hour in the Delta.
The collapsing store where a lie about 14-year-old Emmett Till began (1955). Markers here have been defaced and replaced for decades — the river-site sign is now bulletproof. Unbearable and necessary.
Three churchyards claim him; Little Zion's pecan-shaded plot north of town is the best-attested. Whiskey and guitar picks accumulate. The Help was filmed all over Greenwood; Tallahatchie Flats rents shotgun shacks on the river.
Navigate day 1 in Google Maps ↗
Robert Johnson's grave on the way out (the music and the movement share this soil), then Jackson: Medgar Evers's home and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum until they close.
Three churchyards claim him; Little Zion's pecan-shaded plot north of town is the best-attested. Whiskey and guitar picks accumulate. The Help was filmed all over Greenwood; Tallahatchie Flats rents shotgun shacks on the river.
As good as American museums get — the 'This Little Light of Mine' rotunda will stay with you. Tougaloo College north of town was the movement's safe harbor.
The modest house — now a national monument — where the NAACP field secretary was assassinated in his driveway, June 12, 1963. The design details (no front door facing the street, high windows) tell you what his family lived with.
Navigate day 2 in Google Maps ↗
East through Neshoba County: Mt. Zion's memorial and the Freedom Summer story told where it happened. James Chaney's hilltop grave outside Meridian before dusk.
The modest house — now a national monument — where the NAACP field secretary was assassinated in his driveway, June 12, 1963. The design details (no front door facing the street, high windows) tell you what his family lived with.
Klansmen burned this church in June 1964 to bait the COFO workers; Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner came, and were murdered on a clay road nearby — the 'Mississippi Burning' case, finally prosecuted in 2005. The rebuilt church keeps their memorial.
On a quiet hill south of town, his headstone braced by steel after years of vandalism. Meridian was the COFO base; the city's new civil rights trail starts downtown.
Navigate day 3 in Google Maps ↗ · via Medgar Evers Home, Mt. Zion & the Neshoba Memorial
The Black Belt at two-lane speed — Demopolis catfish for lunch. Selma by afternoon: Brown Chapel, the Voting Rights Museum, and the bridge walked slowly, both directions.
A Black Belt river-town breather: Gaineswood's strange grandeur, catfish plates, and the Tombigbee rolling by. Rest here; Selma asks for your full attention tomorrow.
Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. Walk it — the rise hides the far side until you crest it, exactly as it hid the troopers. Brown Chapel AME (the staging ground) and the National Voting Rights Museum hold both ends of the story.
Navigate day 4 in Google Maps ↗ · via Demopolis
US 80's 54 miles with stops at the Lowndes Interpretive Center and the Liuzzo memorial. Evening at the Capitol steps and Dexter Avenue, where the march ended.
NPS center mid-march at the Tent City site, where evicted Black sharecroppers lived for two years after registering to vote. The Viola Liuzzo memorial stands a few miles on.
EJI's museum (slavery to mass incarceration) and the memorial to lynching victims — steel monuments hanging by county. The most important new memorial in America. Give it the time it asks for.
Dr. King's only pulpit (1954–60), one block downhill from the capitol where the march ended and where Jefferson Davis was sworn in a century before — the whole American argument on one street.
The corner where the boycott began (December 1955) and the Greyhound station where the Freedom Riders were mobbed in May 1961 — preserved as it stood, ticket windows and all.
Navigate day 5 in Google Maps ↗ · via Lowndes Interpretive Center
The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice take a full day, and should. Rosa Parks and the Freedom Rides museums if there's anything left in the tank.
EJI's museum (slavery to mass incarceration) and the memorial to lynching victims — steel monuments hanging by county. The most important new memorial in America. Give it the time it asks for.
Dr. King's only pulpit (1954–60), one block downhill from the capitol where the march ended and where Jefferson Davis was sworn in a century before — the whole American argument on one street.
The corner where the boycott began (December 1955) and the Greyhound station where the Freedom Riders were mobbed in May 1961 — preserved as it stood, ticket windows and all.
Navigate day 6 in Google Maps ↗
Tuskegee spur (Moton Field's hangars), then Birmingham: 16th Street Baptist, Kelly Ingram Park's sculptures, the Civil Rights Institute. Fly out, or take the Anniston Freedom Riders monument on the drive home.
The September 15, 1963 bombing that killed four girls; the park where children faced dogs and hoses that May — its sculptures put you between them. The Civil Rights Institute across the street completes the triangle.
Navigate day 7 in Google Maps ↗
The Civil Rights Pilgrimage is a 7-day trip of about 900 miles.
It starts in Memphis.
It chains The Blues Highway and The Civil Rights Trail.
Day 1: Greenwood; Day 2: Greenwood → Jackson; Day 3: near Meridian, MS; Day 4: near Selma, AL; Day 5: The March: Selma → Montgomery; Day 6: Montgomery; Day 7: near Birmingham, AL.