AN INVITATION FOR TOUR OPERATORS · DECEMBER 1–5, 2026
Alabama Roads to Freedom
Birmingham · Selma · Montgomery
Five days on the ground with the sites, the storytellers, and the people who can open doors for your groups. Our Alabama partners are hosting a limited number of operators at no cost — your seat, your room, and your meals are covered.
- Dates: Dec 1–5, 2026
- Cities: Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery
- Your cost: Complimentary
- You cover: Airfare, arrival transfer, tips
- Operator seats: limited — registration closes automatically once full
- RSVP by: contact us for the current deadline
Not an operator? Interpreters, tour directors and guides register here →
Five days, three cities, and the people who lived the history telling it themselves.
Why we’re hosting you
Civil rights and heritage travel is one of the fastest-moving segments in group tourism, and Alabama holds more of the actual ground than anywhere else in the country. But it isn’t a product you can build from a brochure. The access, the pacing, the local storytellers, the places where a group needs twenty minutes of silence instead of another stop — you have to feel it.
So we’re putting you on the bus. You’ll meet site directors and community storytellers, share a table with families whose names are in the history, and see exactly how a group moves through each of these places.
You’ll also be traveling with the interpreters and tour directors doing this as a joint learning expedition — NAI and IATDG members practicing each other’s craft on the route. Which means the guides you might one day contract are in the seats around you for five days.
We ask one thing in return: come with your product calendar in mind, and tell us honestly what would and wouldn’t work for your groups.
The route
Highlights below. The full itinerary with site descriptions and timings comes with your confirmation.
Tue, Dec 1 — Birmingham
Arrive and gather
Airport pickup, hotel check-in, then a mix and mingle followed by dinner with live entertainment.
Wed, Dec 2 — Birmingham
The Birmingham campaign, block by block
The motel rooms where Dr. King and Rev. Shuttlesworth planned the 1963 campaign, the church whose bombing turned national opinion, and lunch with Ms. Barbara Shores in Smithfield — once known as Dynamite Hill — whose father represented Dr. King.
- A.G. Gaston Motel
- 16th Street Baptist Church
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Lunch with Ms. Barbara Shores
- Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
Thu, Dec 3 — Birmingham → Selma → Montgomery
Iron, then the bridge
Breakfast inside the blast furnaces that built the Magic City, a stop at Barber Vintage Motorsports, then west to Selma to walk the Edmund Pettus Bridge and follow the march route through Lowndes County.
- Sloss Furnaces
- Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- Lowndes County Interpretive Center
Fri, Dec 4 — Montgomery
Where the boycott began
Dr. King’s church and the parsonage that survived a 1956 bombing, the house that sheltered Freedom Riders in 1961, and the sanctuary where thousands gathered on December 5, 1955 to launch a 381-day boycott.
- Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church
- Dexter Parsonage Museum
- Harris House & driving tour
- Holt Street Baptist Church Experience
- Rosa Parks Museum
- Montgomery Square
Sat, Dec 5 — Montgomery
The Legacy sites, then home
A full morning across the Equal Justice Initiative’s campus — the museum, the memorial’s 800-plus suspended monuments, and seventeen acres of sculpture along the Alabama River — before afternoon departures.
- The Legacy Museum
- National Memorial for Peace and Justice
- Freedom Monument Sculpture Park
Your seat is hosted
Invited operators attend as guests of Alabama Tourism, the Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau, and Experience Montgomery.
- Four hotel nights — December 1 through 4
- All meals — Every meal throughout the program, including two dinners with entertainment
- Ground transportation — Motorcoach for the full route, Birmingham through Selma to Montgomery, and a drop-off at Birmingham airport at the end
- Every site and activity — All admissions and entrance fees included
- You cover — Airfare, getting from the airport to the hotel on arrival, gratuities, and anything personal
How to claim your seat
You’ll register through the same page as everyone else, then apply your operator code ALATO26 to bring the balance to zero. It takes about two minutes.
1. Open the registration page — Use the button below. Choose your room preference — double occupancy, or the single supplement if you’d rather have your own room.
2. Fill in your details — Include your company in the organization field, and flag any dietary or mobility needs while you’re there.
3. Enter your operator code — In the Discount Code field near the bottom, enter code ALATO26 and click Apply. Your total should drop to $0.00.
4. Check the total before you submit — If it still shows a balance, stop and email us rather than paying — the code may have been mistyped.
Presented by
- Alabama Tourism — Sponsor
- Greater Birmingham CVB — Sponsor
- Experience Montgomery — Sponsor
Seats are limited and going by invitation
Register below and enter code ALATO26 in the Discount Code field to bring your total to $0.00.
Your operator code: ALATO26
Questions
Yes. Four hotel nights, all meals, the motorcoach, and every site admission are hosted. You register through the standard page and apply your operator code ALATO26, which zeroes out the $549 fee. You cover airfare, getting to the hotel on arrival, and gratuities for the guides and drivers.
Yes, as long as they’re in a position to evaluate and build product.
Fly into Birmingham–Shuttlesworth (BHM) on December 1 and out of BHM on December 5. Getting from the airport to the hotel on arrival is on you. From there our transportation covers everything — every site across all three cities — and drops you back at Birmingham airport at the end.
Extra hotel nights before or after the program are available at $275 per night, at your own expense.
Deliberately. Reflection time is built into the schedule rather than squeezed between transfers, and the interpreters traveling with us shape how each site is introduced and closed. It’s worth experiencing that pacing firsthand before you build your own version of this itinerary.
