Louisiana Civil Rights Trail Launched by Office of Tourism

I believe in order to move forward from where we are we have to understand where we've come from. The Office of Tourism in the state of Louisiana must have a similar mindset as they have announced the launch of the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail. The in-person and online interactive program details the civil rights movement in Louisiana during the 1950s and 1960s.

The online and interactive portion of the project features interviews with over 400 different individuals who tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana in the first person. Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser told the Louisiana Radio Network that the idea for the trail was born at a tourism conference.

In addition to the online and interactive portions of the experience, the in-person part of the trail features 15 different site markers placed throughout the state. Each marker commemorates an event or a location that had an impact on civil rights in the state.

Nungesser says one of the markers commemorates the McDonogh Three. 

Leona Tate tells it herself. It’s pretty powerful. Those things you just can’t imagine what the feeling was like back then and to hear it from her lips and those stories are pretty incredible

Leona Tate was one of three six-year-old African American girls who were the first to attend an all-white school in New Orleans in 1960.  Nungesser also said there will be a marker placed at Dooky Chase Restaurant and other buildings and locales that played an important part in the civil rights movement in Louisiana.

If you'd like to check out the site, just search Louisiana Civil Rights Trail or you can just click the link it will take you right there. It will also take you back to another very different time in our state's history.

As we said at the beginning, you can't really tell how far you've come until you take a look back. While progress on civil rights issues in our state has certainly come a long way in the 50 plus years of the civil rights movement. The Louisiana Civil Rights Trail also illustrates just how much further we still need to go