Civil Rights Leaders on Montgomery’s Interpretive Center Location

So, what do they think?

Representative Alvin Holmes, who attended Alabama State University, says he believes the Montgomery Interpretive Center should be somewhere along the Selma to Montgomery March route.

“To my knowledge, nothing concerning the Selma to Montgomery March took place on the campus of Alabama State. I mean, you can’t just, you just can’t make up history.”

Though others think differently. Sheyann Webb Christburg was just eight years old when she marched from Selma to Montgomery. Dubbed the “Smallest Freedom Fighter,’ she was the youngest on the trail. She tells us she’s fine with the Civil Rights Interpretive Center being built on ASU’s campus.

“Many people have their opinions on where it should be,” she says. “I would like for it to just happen. I can reflect vividly at St. Jude and if it’s Alabama State University, that would be fine. As long as it happens.”

Others who marched agree. Representative Thad McClammy is a graduate of ASU and says students played a role in the march.

“That’s what’s so frustrating,” he says. “The people that’s out here talking about what the students didn’t do…don’t know. Because they were somewhere hiding under a rock or something. Now all of a sudden, we have all these experts.”

There are already two other civil rights interpretive centers open,one in Lowndes County and one in Selma. Montgomery’s center will be the third and final. Civil rights leader Faya Rose Toure says she doesn’t like that fact that there’s three of them.

“I think the parks service has done us a disservice,” she says. “Working together, people would have made sure that all parts of that history would have been preserved.”

Alabama State University plans to break ground on the interpretive center next March.