Blog 1

Today many of these former battlegrounds in the South have become tourist attractions financially supported by local, state and federal resources. The so-called civil rights tourism industry has made the civil rights movement an object of the Southern economy. It can be argued that this fairly new section of tourism is used to help former slave states make yet another profit of the African American plight. On the other hand, tourism dollars are helping rebuild an entire economy for both white as well as African American Southerners. Furthermore, it can be claimed that civil rights tourism promotes tolerance via education and has a major ideological as well as political impact throughout the United States.

A firm classification of cultural heritage tourism has been devised by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private, nonprofit membership organization committed to the preservation of historic sites and “revitalizing America’s communities”: “The National Trust defines cultural heritage tourism as traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present. It includes cultural, historic and natural resources” (National Trust for Historic Preservation). The overall aim of cultural heritage tourism is the preservation of heritage and culture as it conveys an authentic experience.

Civil rights tourism is, thus, identified as a branch of cultural heritage tourism. Shaila Dewan, the author of a New York Times article published in 2004, points out that the commemoration of the civil rights movement is almost on an equal level to the “exhaustive celebration” of the Civil War in the South, hence, underlining the growing recognition of civil rights commemoration as a tourist attraction in the South. Furthermore, the article reveals clearly how civil rights tourism was only reluctantly welcomed by local whites: “Yet resistance persists, particularly among whites who see no reason to dredge up the painful past or who fear that the motive is to assign blame” (Dewan). As tourists began searching for civil rights sites and African Americans were gaining political power, a growing number of sites of commemoration emerged in the South and tourism dollars began accumulating (Dewan). Hence, the combination of economic prospects and tourists seeking civil rights sites started today’s civil rights tourism industry in the South. An article in the magazine Marketing News published by the American Marketing Association in June 1998 defines the beginning of civil rights tourism to be around 1989 during an economic stagnation in tourism. Accordingly, the aim of civil rights tourism was to attract African American tourists to the South and to improve its tourism economy (“Black Tourism Power”).

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/us/civil-rights-battlegrounds-enter-world-of-tourism.html?scp=1&sq=Civil%20Rights%20Battlegrounds%20Enter%20World%20of%20Tourism&st=cse