The new United States Civil Rights Trail, created nearly 50 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, commemorates the fight for equality and civil rights for African Americans across the American South.
The trail spans 14 states and Washington, D.C., highlighting more than 100 crucial landmarks and moments that changed the course of history in the USA. See the full list of these historic sites on the KTBS-3 website.
There is a site from Louisiana featured — the Melrose Plantation.
Melrose Plantation was founded by free blacks.
Melrose Plantation is a 200-year-old cotton and pecan plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana built by and for free blacks. Although born a slave, Marie Thérèse Coincoin was purchased by and granted her freedom from Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer, with whom she had ten children.
In 1796, her son Louis Metoyer built the majority of Melrose Plantation, including the Big House, by 1833. Today, visitors can tour the National Historic Landmark to learn about life on the plantation during the 19th century and about the families that lived on property after the Metoyers.
