Malden Brother?s Barber Ship at the Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. got his hair cut, was a site of meetings between black and white leaders during the civil rights era. | William Abranowicz

Oral history project launches as civil rights tourism booms Greensboro, Alabama, isn?t on the typical tourist itinerary. Located an hour from Selma and a few hours from Birmingham, it?s a rural community in an area known as the Black Belt, a poorer agricultural region of the South populated by descendants of slavery. But during the civil rights era, that remoteness was valued by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other movement leaders, who would visit to escape and relax. One family, the Burroughs, even protected King and his supporters from a potential Ku Klux Klan ambush in 1968, earning their home the title of the Safe House, which has been turned into a small museum showcasing local civil rights history. Now, a new project seeks to put similar social justice sites across the state on the tourism map, as more and more attention is paid to this important part of 20th century history.
Launched earlier this week, the Voices of Alabama project aims to illuminate the importance of lesser-known civil rights history sites in the state with a collection of first-person, oral history video interviews. A collaboration between the World Monuments Fund, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the Alabama African-American Civil Rights H...