Many of the USA's top black/African diaspora travel sites are associated with this towering 1960s Civil Rights era figure, especially those having to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.:

MLK's home in Atlanta, Georgia; Alabama's Selma-to-Montgomery Historic Trail and two-year-old Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice; the museum at Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee where King was assassinated in 1968; and of course his memorial in Washington DC (above). In DC, of course, he has been memorialized in this monument (at also in the District there's the wonderful but sobering National Museum of African-American History and the African Heritage Trail).

Elswhere, In New York City, Manhattan's uptown Harlem neighborhood as high on the list, as well, with its soul food restaurants, the Cotton Club, the Apollo Theatre, the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The jazz/music scenes of Chicago; Memphis, Tennessee; New Orleans; and Kansas City, Missouri were historically and continue to be hugely influenced by African-American artists; majority-black Detroit, Michigan boasts a dynamic cultural scene, as well as the Tuskeegee Airmen National Historical Museum, celebrating the U.S. Air Force's first black squadron, in the World War II era.

Other fascinating institutions throughout the country include various restored plantations throughout the South, complete with slave quarters and historical documentation; the Buffalo Soldiers Museum in Houston, Texas, celebrating the black legion which helped open up America's West (and on a related note, Denver's Black American West Museum); the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio; Chicago's Pullman Porter Museum (about the dedicated black men who worked incredibly long hours for little pay on America's segregated trains in the 1940s and 50s); Los Angeles' California African-American Museum, and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Finally, in Memphis the National Museum of African American Music  opened in 2019, joining the National Civil Rights Museum.

Read more about African-derived heritage and culture around the world in my post 12 Top Destinations for African Diaspora Travel.


Reinhard Link