Living Legacies

Civil rights heroes still share their stories

BY BRIONA LAMBACK

The civil rights movement is more than just history.

Though the key events in the struggle for civil rights took place in the 1950s and ’60s, the values and convictions behind them are still alive today. And many of the people who participated in the marches, sit-ins, meetings and boycotts are still alive too.

At sites along the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, visitors can meet locals who lived through the movement and hear their perspectives on what took place. Many of their stories have also been recorded and published as part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail Podcast.

Here are five stories from the podcast series that will inspire visitors to take their own civil rights journeys.

Valda Harris Montgomery MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

Most people haven’t seen the things a young Valda Harris Montgomery witnessed during the civil rights movement. When she was just 13, a beaten and battered John Lewis showed up at her family’s Montgomery, Alabama, home in need of care and refuge. What would’ve been a shock for most wasn’t for Harris Montgomery because, during the movement, Black people were used to witnessing — or being victims of — racial attacks.

Harris Montgomery inadvertently had a frontline view of the movement, and her father’s work kept her family there. Because he was a fierce supporter of civil rights, Harris had opened his home as a haven and a strategic meeting place for leaders like King, John Lewis, Diane Nash and more. Once, Harris opened the family home to 33 student Freedom Riders, who were attacked during the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station integration challenge.

Harris owned Dean Drug Store, the city’s oldest Black-owned drug store, where he operated a lunch counter specifically for Black folks to have a safe place to dine. He also provided medical assistance during the historic Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights.

But Harris Montgomery didn’t always recognize the magnitude of what was happening in her home until decades later. King was a good neighbor, who had once knocked on her family’s door covered in bandages after being stabbed. Harris Montgomery’s recent memoir, “Just A Neighbor: A Child’s Memoir of the Civil Right Movement,” details living in the Centennial Hill neighborhood of Montgomery during such a pivotal time in history.

Today the Richard Harris House is a museum and cultural center open for tours by appointment.

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