County: Hale  |   Attraction Types: Museum

On the night of March 21, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. sought refuge from the Ku Klux Klan inside a small shot gun style home in the depot neighborhood of Greensboro, Alabama. Today that house is known as The Safe House Black History Museum. It is a site of great significance to American Black History as well as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Mrs. Theresa Burroughs, a close friend of the King family and an active participant of the Civil Rights Movement, turned this small shotgun house into the Safe House Black History Museum which documents the local struggle for equality. It contains relics of the period from slavery through the civil rights movement. Displayed at the museum are many unpublished photos of the civil rights struggle in the Black Belt. These include photos of the Greensboro marches, of Bloody Sunday in Selma, and of the triumphant march from Selma to Montgomery.

Mrs. Burroughs sought Auburn Rural Studio’s assistance with renovating the museum. Rural Studio agreed to help and three Rural Studio students began work on this project in the fall of 2009. The project involved renovation of the museum building and a nearly identical small shotgun building located beside the museum that was used for storage. As with all Rural Studio projects, the students not only designed the project, but they performed all of the work that was involved with completing the job.