Plot
Miles Woodman, an African-American boy who is a fan of Hank Aaron and attends Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, is doing poorly academically, and his teacher, Mrs. Clark, tells him that he may have to repeat sixth grade if his grades do not improve. Miles and his class visit Martin's childhood house, which has become a museum dedicated to him. He and his white best friend, Randy Smith, explore Martin's bedroom but are caught by the museum's curator, Mrs. Peck, who is winding an old watch.
After holding Martin's baseball glove, Miles and Randy are transported to 1941 and encounter a 12-year-old Martin playing with his white friends, Sam and Skip Dale, until their mother reprimands them for integrating with "coloreds". Martin explains to Miles and Randy that her hatred of black people is because she sees them as "different", but that violence would make things worse. They are then transported to 1944 and meet a 15-year-old Martin on a segregated train, who explains that blacks and whites cannot integrate and must be kept separate. While having dinner with Martin's family, they look in his room after he leaves to make rounds with his father and are transported to 1956, where they meet Martin in his 20s, working as a minister at a church. While holding a meeting about the Montgomery bus boycott, which began after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, he is informed that his house has been bombed and returns home to find that his wife and newborn daughter have escaped unharmed. His friend Turner announces his plan to attack the perpetrators in retaliation, but Martin stops him, reminding the crowd of Mahatma Gandhi peacefully standing his ground to drive the British colonies out of India and Jesus' teachings on loving one's enemies. Miles and Randy are then transported to the Birmingham riot of 1963 and witness firefighters and police officers, under the orders of Bull Connor, spraying black protesters with fire hoses and releasing German Shepherds to attack them before arresting them.
Randy and Miles are transported back to the museum; at school the next day, they tell Miss Clark about the events leading up to Martin's work before watching a videotape of his work. After school, their classmates, Latina girl Maria Ramirez and white boy Kyle Langon, decide to investigate how they got the information. When they arrive at the museum, Mrs. Peck allows them to stay, but warns them that interfering with the past can affect the present. Maria and Kyle are transported with them to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and meet Martin in his 30s, along with a young Mrs. Clark. When they return, they discover that Martin was assassinated; to save him from this fate, they travel to 1941 and bring a 12-year-old Martin to the present. However, only Miles and Martin return together and the present is altered: the museum is burnt down, Randy and Kyle are racists and no longer friends with or know Miles, Miles' bus driver, Mr. Willis, is racist and refuses to allow black students to ride the bus, their school is segregated and named after Robert E. Lee, its principal, Mr. Harris, is racist and mistreats Mrs. Clark, Maria works as a maid and does not speak English, and Miles and his mother live in poverty.
Martin surmises that him leaving his time created an alternate timeline where his civil rights work never happened. Realizing that he must return to his own time, Martin gives Miles his watch and bids him farewell despite him warning him of his assassination, and the timeline returns to normal after he is killed at the motel. Miles reunites with Randy, Maria, and Kyle, and Mrs. Peck tells him that while they cannot change the past, they can change the future for the better. Miles receives an A on his history project, allowing him to progress to seventh grade, and he and his friends vow to continue Martin's work.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement.
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader who was the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. from 1953 until his assassination in 1968. As an advocate for African-American equality, she was a leader for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. King was also a singer who often incorporated music into her civil rights work. King met her husband while attending graduate school in Boston. They both became increasingly active in the American civil rights movement.
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement.
Dexter Scott King was an American civil and animal rights activist, attorney, and author. The second son of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, he was also the brother of Martin Luther King III, Bernice King, and Yolanda King; and also grandson of Alberta Williams King and Martin Luther King Sr. He is the author of Growing Up King: An Intimate Memoir.
Amelia Isadora Platts Boynton Robinson was an American activist who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama, and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.
Hosea Lorenzo Williams was an American civil rights leader, activist, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist, and politician. He was a trusted member of fellow famed civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr.'s inner circle. Under the banner of their flagship organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King depended on Williams to organize and stir masses of people into nonviolent direct action in myriad protest campaigns they waged against racial, political, economic, and social injustice. King alternately referred to Williams, his chief field lieutenant, as his "bull in a china shop" and his "Castro." Vowing to continue King's work for the poor, Williams is well known in his own right as the founding president of one of the largest social services organizations in North America, Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless. His famous motto was "Unbought and Unbossed."
James Joseph Reeb was an American Unitarian Universalist minister, pastor, and activist during the civil rights movement in Washington, D.C., and Boston, Massachusetts. While participating in the Selma to Montgomery marches actions in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, he was murdered by white segregationists and white supremacists, dying of head injuries in the hospital two days after being severely beaten. Three men were tried for Reeb's murder but were acquitted by an all-white jury. His murder remains officially unsolved.
Jack O'Dell was an African-American activist writer and communist, best known for his role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. During World War II, he was an organizer for the National Maritime Union. He was also involved with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as well as working with Martin Luther King Jr.
The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama.
James Gardner Clark, Jr. was the sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama, United States from 1955 to 1966. He was one of the officials responsible for the violent arrests of civil rights protestors during the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, and is remembered as a racist whose brutal tactics included using cattle prods against unarmed civil rights supporters.
James Earl Ray was an American fugitive who was convicted of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. After the assassination, Ray fled to London, England and was captured in the United Kingdom. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea—thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence—and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights movement leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m at age 39. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful. Ray died in prison in 1998.
The St. Augustine movement was a part of the wider Civil Rights Movement, taking place in St. Augustine, Florida from 1963 to 1964. It was a major event in the city's long history and had a role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
James Peck was an American activist who practiced nonviolent resistance during World War II and in the Civil Rights Movement. He is the only person who participated in both the Journey of Reconciliation (1947) and the first Freedom Ride of 1961, and has been called a white civil rights hero. Peck advocated nonviolent civil disobedience throughout his life, and was arrested more than 60 times between the 1930s and 1980s.
Marie Priscilla Martin Foster was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1960s. Her successful voter registration in Dallas County, Alabama fueled her to become an activist, and she began teaching adult classes to help people pass the required literacy tests. She was the Alabama foot soldier that convinced Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Selma, Alabama and helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Her dedication gave her the moniker "The Mother of the Voting Rights Movement," which was shortened to Mother Foster.
The Freedom Rides Museum is located at 210 South Court Street in Montgomery, Alabama, in the building which was until 1995 the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station. It was the site of a violent attack on participants in the 1961 Freedom Ride during the Civil Rights Movement. The May 1961 assaults, carried out by a mob of white protesters who confronted the civil rights activists, "shocked the nation and led the Kennedy Administration to side with civil rights protesters for the first time."
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down is a 1989 autobiography written by civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. The book charts his life and work with his best friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their leadership of the Civil Rights Movement to help African Americans obtain equal rights with white Americans. His book engendered much controversy due to Abernathy's allegations of King's infidelity the night before he was assassinated.
Conspiracy theories about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent leader of the civil rights movement, relate to different accounts of the incident that took place on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, the day after giving his final speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop". Claims soon arose over suspect aspects of King's assassination and the controversial role of the assassin, James Earl Ray. Although his guilty plea eliminated the possibility of a trial before a jury, within days, Ray had recanted and claimed his confession was forced. Suspicions were further raised by the confirmation of illegal surveillance of King by the FBI and the CIA, and the FBI's attempt to allegedly prompt King to commit suicide.
