2009 Official Alabama Vacation Guide - (Page 13) The Rosa Parks Museum vividly recreates the stories of the quiet black woman arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white man and the bus boycott that sparked the Civil Rights Movement. Alabama State University’s National Center for the Study of Civil Rights provides a place of learning for scholars, students, lay historians, and others interested in studying the movement and Montgomery’s place in it. In Tuskegee, visit historic Tuskegee University, founded by Booker T. Washington, tour the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, which includes the Carver Museum and other significant structures, and learn about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, lunchroom sit-ins, and the plight of black veterans after the war at the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center. While civil rights advocates were working to achieve racial equality, the U.S. Army was forging ground in space exploration on Alabama soil. The German rocket team led by Dr. Wernher von Braun arrived in Huntsville in 1950 to work for the U.S. Army, thus signifying the beginning of Alabama’s important role in space exploration. Visitors can hear the story and learn more at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration, which serves as the gateway to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and its Space Camp program. It houses the visitor ticketing area, a 350-seat auditorium, and the Saturn V rocket, the spacecraft that landed man on the moon in 1969. Just over the hill is the NASAMarshall Space Flight Center. The 38,000-acre military post is home to several of the Army’s most important programs. In the 1960s and ‘70s, Alabama studios rolled out big musical hits that have since been termed “The Muscle Shoals Sound.” But music seems inherent in our veins. Our Alabama roots gave birth to the “Father of the Blues,” W.C. Handy in Florence, “Queen of the Blues,” Dinah Washington in Tuscaloosa, the “icon” of country music, Hank Williams Sr. in Mt. Olive, and countless other singers and musicians. Follow the Alabama Music Trail from the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in Tuscumbia to the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in Birmingham down to Mobile, where Jimmy Buffett spent part of his childhood, and you, too, will be singing “Sweet Home Alabama.” Alabama, today, is a far cry from the embattled state it was during the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. It is a place reflective of change, growth, and prosperity. German steel makers and foreign automotive manufacturers have come to our Southern soil and have discovered, much like de Soto did centuries ago, that Alabama is a great place to grow families and businesses. People who once ventured away are now returning to their Southern roots in Sweet Home Alabama. They are rediscovering what many have known all along, that Alabama is a very special place, one rich in history, culture, pride, and resources—a place that celebrates its past as it embraces the future. left ••• right Fort Morgan State Historic Site near Gulf Shores, Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery. + w w w. a l a b a m a . t r a v e l 13 http://www.alabama.travel
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