Rosa Parks Museum

Operated by Troy University on the spot where Parks was arrested, the museum walks you through the Montgomery Bus Boycott via a recreated 1955 Cleveland Avenue bus, video projections, and original documents from the year-long boycott that followed. Its centrepiece is a multimedia presentation that puts you inside the bus at the moment of the arrest.

A separate Children's Wing uses a "time-travel" bus to trace earlier struggles against segregation. Allow about ninety minutes. The combined ticket with the Children's Wing is worth it if you have kids in tow.

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The museum sits at the exact spot where Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Contrary to the common school-textbook version, Parks was not simply a tired seamstress — she had been a trained NAACP secretary for over a decade and had attended the Highlander Folk School the previous summer, where civil-rights organising was taught explicitly.

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