Alabama’s civil rights heritage has a story for everyone, from old-school exhibits to high-tech treatment.

Religious leaders, working folks – even children – bravely confronted racial and social injustice throughout Alabama in 1963 during the civil rights movement. Their actions 50 years ago, and in the years immediately surrounding that pivotal year, helped change a nation, and this summer the history of the movement in Alabama is drawing visitors from around the world to the Alabama Civil Rights Heritage Trails.

“If you want to study the civil war, you go to Virginia where many of the major battles occurred. If you want to learn about the civil rights movement, you come to Alabama, where a majority of the major events happened,” said Lee Sentell, state tourism director.

Markers, such as these in Kelly Ingram Park, provide tourists with images and details of civil rights history in Birmingham.

“What other place can you go and visit the former church of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., see his office in the basement and have a photo taken in the pulpit? There is richness in our story, and people visiting Alabama this year are impressed with the way we are telling it,” Sentell said.

Major stops along the trail in Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery can be easily followed using a new, downloadable app http://alabama.travel/civil-rights-app. Among the highlights are the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, the Voting Rights Institute and Museum in Selma, and Bethel and Sixteenth Street Baptist churches in Birmingham. The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the fiery minister who led the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and invited King to Birmingham, was pastor of Bethel Baptist, and many members of that church enlisted as “foot soldiers” in the fight for civil rights.

Soon, the trail will expand with more information added to the app on Decatur and Scottsboro, where the story of the Scottsboro Boys unfolded. These nine black youths were falsely charged and jailed in 1931 after two white women accused them of rape. The boys were arrested near Scottsboro, and many of the legal proceedings took place in Decatur.

Visitors at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute gather at the statue of The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

Visitors at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute gather at the statue of The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.Birmingham established its Civil Rights Heritage Trail prior to the start of the ongoing commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the momentous civil rights events that took place in the city in 1963. Throughout downtown, large cutouts and photographs mark key locations in the movement and provide maps so that trail visitors can take self-guided tours.

This marker at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham marks the location of a bomb blast that killed four little girls on Sept. 15, 1963 at the height of the civil rights movement.

Construction is now underway in Birmingham to expand the trail along Center Street, northwest of downtown, in an area that became known as “Dynamite Hill.”

The neighborhood was home to many prominent African-American lawyers, educators and leaders of the civil rights movement and was a repeated target of Ku Klux Klan bombings.

In Montgomery, the state is helping fund a third interpretative center devoted to the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights. It will be located at Alabama State University’s National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture. Interpretive centers already exist in the town of White Hall and in Selma, where marchers began the trek that led to the historic clash with lawmen called Bloody Sunday. The new center is expected to be completed before the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 2015.

Louise Dale traveled from her home in Leeds, a city in West Yorkshire, England, in mid June and spent about three weeks in the South exploring civil rights history. She walked around Kelly Ingram Park and visited the Civil Rights Institute and Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. She also she visited Montgomery, Selma and Monroeville. ” In the U.K. we don’t get to study American history…not much,” she said. ” I came here, to the South, because I wanted to see the places where history happened.”

Louise Dale, of West Yorkshire, England, takes photos of the statute of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Kelly Ingram Park.

State tourism officials predict the surge in civil rights tourism in Alabama this summer, and throughout this year, will do more than impact the state’s economy – they believe it may also shift perceptions about Alabama.

In years past, a majority of Alabama civil rights tourists were school groups, church groups or families from places such as Chicago or Detroit, Sentell said. “They would come to learn more about the stories they had heard from family and friends.”

Today, Sentell said, there is greater diversity in the individual tourists and groups coming to view the state’s civil rights history. He expects that to continue through the year, and happen again in 2015 when the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march is commemorated.

Sherrel Wheeler Stewart is a freelance writer who grew up in Birmingham.