The historic Bethel Baptist Church, a red-brick building at the corner of 29^th Avenue North and 32^nd Street in Birmingham’s Collegeville neighborhood, was shaken and the parsonage next door was almost destroyed in a Christmas dynamite blast in 1956.

Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham. (contributed)

The blast, later determined to be the handiwork of the Ku Klux Klan, was designed to instill fear in church Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth, leader of the city’s civil rights movement. The church and parsonage are where key meetings were often held by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and its leaders.

In 1998, the Bethel Church family moved to a new church a block away. The historic building is being preserved and continues to attract visitors who want to know the story of the civil rights movement and experience the places where those stories came to life.

While Black History Month often is a time of focus on places and people who helped shape the world, state tourism officials say African-American history attracts visitors throughout the year. Many of those places are off the beaten path.

Bethel Baptist Church is in a community surrounded by railroad tracks and short streets. If you do a Google search, you may be directed to the new church building.

For information on the historic church and to arrange tours, call 205-324-8489 or 205-322-9857 or visit their website.

Freedom Rides Museum, Montgomery

Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th president of the United States, who signed the Civil Rights Act into law barring discrimination based on race. (contributed)

Located at 210 South Court St. in Montgomery, a few blocks from the Rosa Parks Museum, the Freedom Rides Museum is in a former Greyhound bus station. It is where black and white Freedom Riders arrived by bus in May 1961 in hopes of changing the South’s segregated terminals. Interstate transportation was desegregated in 1960 by a federal court ruling in Boynton v. Virginia. Still, in the Deep South blacks had to sit in the rear of buses and could not use restrooms and restaurants reserved for whites at bus and train terminals.

The museum tells the story of the Freedom Riders being attacked in Montgomery. Outside the restored terminal, a huge panel exhibit with photos and text captures the highlights of the attack and the subsequent rally at the First Baptist Church where the Rev. Ralph Abernathy was pastor. Inside, art inspired by the Freedom Riders is on display.

The museum is open, with limited hours, and for groups of 10 or more. For tour information, call 334-230-2676 or 334-414-8647.

Miles College, Fairfield

Located just west of Birmingham in Fairfield, Miles College has produced leaders of the civil rights movement and in local and national government.

Miles College students in 1962 initiated the first successful selective buying campaign designed to get the attention of Birmingham’s white government and political leaders who made segregation the law of the land.

Miles was founded in 1898. The campus includes several landmarks significant to history and to the activism of its students.

For information on Miles, contact the Office of College Relations at 205-929-1000.

Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. (contributed)

National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, Selma

In 1965, civil rights marchers were beaten at Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma as hundreds first attempted to march to Montgomery challenging the state’s discriminatory voting laws. An annual commemoration of Bloody Sunday is held in Selma the first weekend in March. During that week of commemoration and throughout the year, many visitors tour the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute to learn of this story that informed the world of injustice in Alabama.

The NVRMI is near the foot of the bridge in Selma’s historic downtown district. The museum is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is open by appointment on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

For more information, go online or call 334-418-0800.

Africatown Cemetery in Mobile’s Plateau community. (contributed)

The Old Plateau Cemetery, Mobile

In 1859, the last known group of slaves was brought illegally from Africa to Mobile on the schooner Clotilda. Although the South still was steeped in segregation and Jim Crow laws, the arriving West Africans built Africatown, a place where they were free.

According to published reports, the remains of 110 former African slaves have been located on the grounds of  Africatown Cemetery in Mobile’s Plateau community.

The welcome center is at 1959 Bay Bridge Cutoff Rd., For more information, call 251-518-1262 or go online.