Contents Overview

 PART ONE: Getting Started - The six opening chapters:

  • Suggest that a journey that will profoundly impact readers may be calling

  • Discuss how the book is organized

  • Address the controversy around civil rights tourism

  • Provide basic and detailed advice and templates on planning your trip, including how to prepare children and teens for civil rights travel

PART TWO: Traveling Freedom’s Road on the Civil Rights Loop - These ten chapters provide detailed travel and history on:

  • Atlanta

  • Montgomery and Tuskegee

  • Selma and Marion

  • Philadelphia, Mississippi

  • Jackson

  • the Mississippi Delta

  • Little Rock

  • Memphis

  • Birmingham

  • Anniston

PART THREE: Traveling Freedom’s Road Elsewhere within the Loop States - The destinations in Part Two fall into five states; this part explores other relevant sites within:

  • Georgia

  • Alabama

  • Mississippi

  • Arkansas

  • Tennessee

PART FOUR: Traveling Freedom’s Road Elsewhere in the South - Important events in civil rights and African American history were not confined to places in the five states covered in Parts Two and Three. This part shares relevant sites in these nine states that border the loop states:

  • Florida

  • South Carolina

  • North Carolina

  • Virginia

  • Louisiana

  • Kentucky

  • Missouri

  • Oklahoma

  • Texas

PART FIVE: Traveling Freedom’s Road Elsewhere in the United States - Civil rights and African American history certainly were not confined to the South. As a result, the final part of the book selectively covers museums, National Park Service sites, and other locations in 24 of the remaining 36 states plus Washington DC.

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Throughout the book, the stories of the people and events that shaped this history are woven into the narrative as well as covered in dedicated sidebars. Since the key role played by women during and prior to the civil rights era seldom make it into the history books, there is a special emphasis placed on shining a spotlight on the often-overlooked contributions of:

• Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson

• Jo Ann Gibson Robertson

• Irene Morgan

• Sarah Mae Flemming

• Unita Blackwell

• Modjeska Monteith Simkins

• Alice Allison Dunnigan

• Edna Mae Griffin…..and many more

The author’s love of music and sports frequently appears when it’s relevant to a storyline or a location. For example, readers learn about “The Game of Change” played during the NCAA basketball tournament in 1963 and the lengths officials in Mississippi went to in trying to prevent one of its state university’s all-white teams from playing against the mixed race team from Loyola of Chicago.

Among the several sidebars dealing with the music of the movement are two that chart the evolution of the anthem of the era, “We Shall Overcome.” Another relates how an ugly incident in Shreveport, Louisiana ultimately led Sam Cooke to write his classic “A Change is Gonna Come.”

The book is peppered with stories that Little Rock Nine member, Dr. Terrence Roberts, noted that the book will elicit an “I never knew that!” reaction from readers. Dr. Roberts said it all when he wrote “such a book is sorely needed.”