We decided that we were not going to take segregated buses any longer.

And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama.

Those voices you just heard, they're the soundtrack of the fight for and against civil rights

in America, Martin Luther King Jr., Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace, and

Rosa Parks, the woman who, with a simple act of civil disobedience, energized the

movement with the Montgomery bus boycott back in 1955.

In fact, Montgomery was the setting for much of the battle for civil rights.

As the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, NPR's Debbie Elliott went to Montgomery to see what it can teach us.

We will not get where we're trying to go in this country if we don't have the courage to

face this history. I talk about slavery and lynching and segregation, not because I want to

punish America. I want to liberate us. I think there's something that feels more like freedom,

more like equality, more like justice, and it's waiting for us.

Consider this. The landscape of Montgomery, Alabama, is a monument to civil rights, but is America losing touch with the lessons of that movement?

From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

Music From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. It's consider this from NPR.

Montgomery, Alabama isn't just known for civil rights.

A city that was home to a thriving slave trade and a stronghold for Jim Crow

is also known as the cradle of Confederacy, but also where Martin Luther King Jr. spent

some of his early years as a pastor. NPR's Debbie Elliott takes us to Montgomery, Alabama,

a city steeped in the complexities of American history.

I'm standing on the top step of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery, where there's a star that marks the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy in

...