Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his prophetic "Mountaintop" speech in this church in Memphis, Tennessee, on the eve of his assassination--April 3, 1968.
Mason Temple served as a focal point of civil rights activities in Memphis during the 1950s and 1960s. Mason Temple was built between 1940 and 1945 as the administrative and spiritual center of the Church of God in Christ, the second largest black denomination. The temple is the centerpiece of a group of six buildings that form the church's world headquarters. Mason Temple is a vast concrete building capable of seating 7,500 people on two levels. The temple, designed with simplified Art Moderne styling and detail, was constructed for regular services as well as to house the annual national convention of church representatives.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge carries U.S. Route 80 Business (US 80 Bus.) across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama. Built in 1940, it is named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. The bridge is a steel through arch bridge with a central span of 250 feet (76 m). Nine large concrete arches support the bridge and roadway on the east side.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge was the site of the conflict of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, when police attacked Civil Rights Movement demonstrators with horses, billy clubs, and tear gas as they were attempting to march to the state capital, Montgomery. The marchers crossed the bridge again on March 21 and walked to the Capitol building.
The bridge was declared a National Historic Landmark on February 27, 2013.
It always bothers me that it seems like every other street is named after some dead government worker, but true American hero like William Moore rarely get any kind of monument, are mostly a footnote of history. There are parades and whole celebrations for dead government workers, but rarely do ordinary courageous citizens get much commemoration. While William Moore, nearly 50 years after his death, got a monument to his life in Binghamton, it’s rare that you hear much about him compared to endless streets and monuments to long dead soldiers and politicians.
On 23 April 2010, a memorial plaque was unveiled outside the Greater Binghamton Transportation Center bus terminal in Binghamton, New York, in honour of a mostly forgotten civil rights and mental health advocate who was murdered on that day 47 years prior.
William Lewis Moore, born in Binghamton on 28 April 1927, was a postal worker and member of the Congress of Racial Equality, who achieved a level of notoriety for staging lone protests against racial segregation in an era when few white people supported such causes.
Moore also became an advocate for mental health issues, a result of having been institutionalized for a year and a half after suffering a mental breakdown while a graduate student at John Hopkins University in the early 1950s. He would ultimately be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia.
Moore staged lone protests by marching to capital cities on three separate occasions to hand-deliver letters he’d written denouncing the practice of racial segregation. His first march was to Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland, followed by a march to the White House to deliver a letter to President John F. Kennedy, on the same day that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was released from the jail in Binghamton following protests in that city.
William Moore was born in Binghamton, N.Y., but he was not just another "Yankee" sticking his nose where many Southerners believed it didn't belong. Moore had roots in the South. Moore was raised in Russell, Miss., after going to live with his grandparents at the age of 2. As an adult, Moore returned to Binghamton and began organizing demonstrations for civil rights. He also became a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a vital arm of activism at the time.
If you drove down Highway 11 five decades ago, you might have spotted a middle-aged white man in rumpled clothes and coiffed hair, sporting a gap-toothed grin. You might have thought little of it and kept driving. But when you glanced back, you would have wondered why this guy was pulling a little red wagon, handing letters to people he passed and pushing a grocery cart plastered with a "Wanted" poster featuring an image of Jesus. William Moore definitely stuck out.
But there were people along his route who did more than wonder about strangers like William Moore. Mary Stanton, author of Freedom Walk, a book about Moore and others who continued his effort after his death, describes people who confronted him. The polite individuals interrogated him about his intentions; the rude threatened him.
Ultimately, Moore was shot twice in the head at point-blank range near Attalla, Ala. He was left on the side of the road at a picnic area approximately 300 miles short of Jackson. In her book, Stanton describes a frightened Willis Elrod, who stumbled over Moore's body when he pulled over to use the restroom.
