Founder of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail and author Lee Sentell will deliver this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Lecture on Thursday. 

The event will be held on Feb. 3 at 3:30 p.m. in Graves Hall Room 118.

Copies of his book “The Official U.S. Civil Rights Trail: What Happened Here Changed the World” will be available for purchase and signing. 

Meredith Bagley, an associate professor and faculty senator for the College of Communication and Information Sciences, will open the event with a discussion to mark the beginning of Black History Month. 

Bagley organized the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Lecture as the recipient of the Communication and Information Sciences Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Speaker Grant. 

“We learn something valuable every time we return to the record of achievement Dr. King left behind — his vision, his dedication, his tactics, his rhetorical style,” Bagley said. “I have never regretted reading, listening to or revisiting his life’s work.” 

At the event, participants can expect to learn about Tuscaloosa’s involvement in the civil rights movement. The book serves as a guide to the Civil Rights Trail stretching across the Southern United States and into Delaware and West Virginia. 

Sentell’s campaign for the U.S. Civil Rights Trail received the International Travel and Tourism Award for best regional promotion at the World Travel Market in London, making Alabama the first state to have its tourism department honored at the event. 

“As I’ve prepared for this event it’s become more and more clear how the tourism industry draws upon a complex set of skills, skills that we teach and study here at UA,” Bagley said. “For this talk, I’ll try to draw out ways the College of Communication and Information Sciences prepares students for the marketing, promotion, creativity, communication and even ethics of civil rights tourism, and I hope attendees feel connections to their own majors or areas of interest as well. It’s much more than a guidebook to historical sites — his book is a primer on race in America, but also just a sampling of all the rich local history that can be gathered on this topic.”

An interactive website is available at no cost alongside the book while on the trail or at home. An augmented-reality experience was designed as an additional companion guide, allowing visitors to experience over 120 landmarks across 14 Southern states.