Articles

On the third Monday in January, which fell this year on January 18, communities nationwide honored civil rights leader and Nobel laureate Martin Luther King Jr.

King, who was born on January 15, 1929, remains an inspiring figure whose contributions to the civil rights movement and to America as we know it cannot be overstated. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, five years after he led the 1963 March on Washington and delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's methods of nonviolent civil disobedience, King shaped the civil rights movement, participating in seminal events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The Road to the Promised Land, which focuses on King and the civil rights movement, remains one of Humanities Texas's most popular traveling exhibitions. Visitors to the Burleson Public Library, South Texas College in McAllen, the Weslaco Museum, and the African American Performing Arts Center in Albuquerque, NM, will have the opportunity to view the exhibition this month. For more information on viewing the exhibition in one of these communities, visit our events calendar.

Featuring photographs, facsimiles of landmark documents, and quotations by Dr. King and others engaged in the struggle for civil rights, The Road to the Promised Land surveys the civil rights movement from Dr. King's emergence in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 through the 1990s.

The exhibition consists of forty black-and-white posters laminated on twenty wood-framed panels. Individual panels focus on such individuals as Rosa Parks, Marian Wright Edelman, Jesse Jackson, and Malcolm X, in addition to Dr. King. It highlights such topics as Montgomery's integrated city council, environmental racism, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the King Center in Atlanta.