The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s engendered significant change in the United States. 

Or did it?

In November 2016, I was privileged to go on an eight-day bus tour to 13 locations of marches and martyrdom in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. There, I learned much about segregation, violence, nonviolence, and courage in the struggle for racial integration a half century ago.

This was personally significant because, in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was a little too young to be involved in this critical cause for civil rights and social justice. 

In truth, until the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, I really didn't know much about the atrocities that white segregationists had inflicted upon blacks; civil rights and race just weren't a part of the conversation in my rural, all-white, Michigan community.

As I would learn much later in adulthood, I and the people in my village were among the unknowing many who, through our ignorance or inattention to racial violence in the South, unwittingly contributed to the problem of systemic racism, also known as institutional racism.

So the historical journey of the Living Legacy Pilgrimage, along with discussion among the 34 others on our tour bus, also taught much about corollaries between civil injustices then and human injustices now. 

For example:

So why mention the "sins of the past?" Because they are still recurring.

Today's human rights violations in the United States are not a modern anomaly; they are a continuation of civil rights violations that extend throughout American history: from colonization, through the "eminent domain" land grab that forced Native Americans westward, through slavery and Jim Crowism, through environmental degradation and profiteering from the labor of neo-enslaved prison inmates by government and big business today.

Even our founding fathers -- as great and futuristic as they were by declaring, "all men (and women) are created equal" with the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- didn't free their slaves, didn't give women the right to vote, and didn't create a cabinet-level Department of Peace to complement the Department of War that they did create.

I write about the past to make a comparison with the present so we, as a society, can self-evaluate and then, hopefully, alter our collective course and move forward into a better, more equitable and humane future. 

Second, there is much to celebrate: 

These and other memorial centers measure success by increasing awareness among people who, like me not that long ago, simply did not know how much some of our nation's human population has been mistreated -- and is still being mistreated -- by others. 

Like these institutions, I write to raise awareness of people like Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Shuttlesworth, the Freedom Riders, the City of St. Jude, and others you will learn about in upcoming blogs.

Next blog: "Eerie view, sobering question"

The Living Legacy Pilgrimage ...

is a powerful, eye-opening, mind-expanding experience into the depths of segregation, racism, and injustice inflicted by White supremacists onto African Americans from the end of slavery to the mid-1900s. 

It is also rife with stories of courage and determination by those who physically and vocally resisted injustices. Thus, it is an inspiration for citizens today to continue the ongoing struggle for justice and equality now.

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