The cemeteries that hold the martyrs and leaders of the modern civil rights movement.
The Cemeteries as Sites of Memory
The cemeteries that hold the remains of the leaders and martyrs of the modern American civil rights movement have themselves become sites of memory. South-View Cemetery in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Sr. and many leaders of the Atlanta movement are interred; the King Center in Atlanta, where Dr. King and Coretta Scott King were ultimately reinterred; Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in Mississippi, where Medgar Evers was originally buried before his reinterment at Arlington National Cemetery; and dozens of smaller community cemeteries holding the remains of locally significant movement participants — all have come to serve as destinations of pilgrimage for the broader American public concerned with the history of the civil rights struggle.
The Martyrs of the Movement
The civil rights movement produced a substantial number of martyrs, most of them killed by white supremacist violence in the 1960s. Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham (Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair), James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, Jonathan Daniels, Vernon Dahmer, Wharlest Jackson, and many others — the cemeteries holding the remains of these martyrs are among the most historically significant burial grounds in the United States. Many are modest community cemeteries whose preservation depends on the same descendant networks that maintain the great majority of historic Black cemeteries.
Religious and Lay Leadership
The civil rights movement was built on the foundation of the Black church, and the cemeteries holding the remains of the religious and lay leaders of the movement are typically the cemeteries associated with that church infrastructure. Dr. King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., is buried at South-View Cemetery in Atlanta; Bayard Rustin is buried at Sunset Memorial Park in Suitland Maryland; A. Philip Randolph is buried at the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson; Roy Wilkins is buried at Westchester Hills as well; Septima Clark is buried at Old Bethel United Methodist Church in Charleston; many others are interred in the historic Black cemeteries of the cities and regions in which they did their work.
Arlington National Cemetery
A small but significant number of civil rights movement figures are interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, on the basis of military service. Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran of the United States Army, was reinterred at Arlington in 1963 with full military honors after his assassination in Mississippi. The boxer Joe Louis, a World War II veteran honored for his role in defeating the Nazi propaganda symbol Max Schmeling and for his subsequent service in the Army, is interred at Arlington. The Tuskegee Airmen and many other African American veterans of the segregated military units of World War II have their burial places at Arlington as well.
Newer Memorial Sites
In recent decades, the original burial sites of several civil rights movement figures have been supplemented by purpose-built memorial sites that serve a public interpretive function. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta, which includes the King Center and the original burial site of Dr. King; the Medgar Evers Home National Monument in Jackson Mississippi; the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument; and the Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery Alabama, which commemorates the more than 4,400 African Americans lynched in the United States between 1877 and 1950, all serve as complements to the cemetery sites themselves.
Visiting Civil Rights Burial Sites
Visitors to civil rights movement burial sites should observe the standard etiquette of the cemetery and should bear in mind that, in many cases, the families of the deceased remain active in the maintenance and interpretation of the site. Several sites have established visitor protocols administered through descendant foundations or affiliated nonprofit organizations; consulting these resources before a visit is recommended. The dignity of the dead and the privacy of the descendant community remain paramount, even at sites of substantial public significance.