On The Bus Uw Civil Rights Pilgrimage - The House Of Podcasts

We marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama. The sun was shining 50 years after bloody Sunday. We sang the hallowed songs again with thousands and thousands from around the world who came to honor those people who shed their blood to make America a better place. The lash of racism and poverty still scores our souls, but hearts turn to light every day. We shall overcome.    Thanks for listening. I see the greatness in you. 

The teen-aged Della Mae Simpson Maynor so wanted to be on the front line at the voting rights march in Marion, Alabama, February 18th, 1965 that she literally pushed her way up until she was standing right behind the leaders. So she witnessed the billy clubs crack heads wide open.  She felt the pain as one swipe cracked her elbow.   Our group had met Della Mae at the performance of a play about Fannie Lou Hamer performed at nearby Judson College. She lunched with us and then agreed to meet us in Marion at the monument outside her church that honors the foot soldiers who changed the direction of American society.   The murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson infuriated Dr. King and the other civil rights leaders, sparking their decision to march from Selma to Montgomery. It was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma March 7th, 1965 that the brutality of the Jim Crow south was on display on TV's across the world.Della Mae Simpson Maynor is another 

The wise doctors in our group of 52 strong talked about the tiny millimeters of skin they have slice through in order to reach the blood, the vessels and the organs. The tinged flesh, this thin part of our humanity, is still what divides many Americans. Skin tone and hair texture evoke such hatred in some that people are murdered, people are destroyed body and soul.At the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi we were asked to reflect on this question- when was the first time you became aware of your skin color, or what society has taken to identifying as your race?

President Obama came to Selma, Alabama  on the 50th anniversary of the bloody march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to honor those who walked. He called on Congress to restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He called on all American's to renew their battles for justice and equality.Joanne Bland has never stopped fighting. Joanne Bland was one of the youngest people put in prison for protesting Jim Crow laws during the 1960's.  She marched on "Bloody Sunday" in Selma in 1965.  Joanne Bland began her civil rights activism as an 8 year old, attending organizing meetings run by Martin Luther King.  By the time she was 11, she had been arrested 13 times. She was co-founder of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute. 50 years after she marched to end american apartheid,  she continues to write, lecture and speak out for civil rights.   She offers tours to people who want to remember the past and imagine a different future.

Emmett Till was a 14 year old Chicagoan visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi in 1955 when he was brutally murdered by white men for supposedly speaking to the 21 year old white wife of the proprietor of the general store. The murder sparked an international outcry.  An historic marker now stands in front of the restored Bryant Grocery store. That is a rare occurrence.  Officials admit they have allowed so many civil rights landmarks to be destroyed in Mississippi that they say they have lost count.  By erasing the landmarks, the white southerners who deny their racist past can also deny the contemporary bigotry that still persists.    I had a  US history named Thomas Govan in college.  He was an old southerner from Louisiana teaching at the University of Oregon in the 70's. His courses on radical American history focused on the battles over workers rights and racism.  We examined the establishment of the Klan, t

James Meredith reportedly doesn't like the statue the University of Mississippi has put up on campus to honor his role in integrating the school in 1962.  In part, it's said he wants to recognize all the people who made strides for civil rights in America.  The lessons we learn every day of our pilgrimage is that there are many more steps to be taken.  Aida Solomon has come to this campus to work for The Winter Institute For Racial Reconciliation. The UW Senior is working is talking with young people around the state about their history and their racial biases.   She hopes confronting those issues in Mississippi will give her tools to push racial progress in the Northwest.  A visitor can still see the bullet holes that struck the Lyceum on the night of September 30th, 1962 when federal marshals and national guard troops clashed with the mob of segregationists. Two people were killed. Scores we

Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the heroes of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s.   Hamer was a voting rights organizer from Ruleville, deep in the heart of the Mississippi delta, when she stepped into the national spotlight at the 1964 Democratic Convention.  Hamer and her integrated delegation from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party charged that the all white, anti-civil rights delegation from Mississippi didn’t represent all democrats in the state. In the end, Hamer rejected an unsatisfying compromise Democrats had crafted to keep southerners from supporting Republican Barry Goldwater. She ran for congress twice after that, but lost.  She continued to work on civil rights, children’s education and access to fresh foods for the poor.    She died in 1977 and is buried in Ruleville beside her husband at the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden. Andrew Young attended her funeral.  So many people came to pay respects that an overflow service took place at the

A young woman in a white skirt walked down the street in front of Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957. A mob of screaming white citizens spit on her, threw trash and tossed spoiled tomato's.  Her desire to go to school, their raw fear and hate, that image went around the world. They soiled her clothes but not her spirit.  We toured the still active high school. It's a national park site now. Joel Allen talked about the pain of times. We read poems from Londonderry. Oppression is universal too.   

Bernard Lafayette in front of the wall of mugshots of the Freedom Riders at the Freedom Ride Museumphoto by Troy Bonnes  Bernard Lafayette is still leading in the battle for universal civil rights through non-violent action.At the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery Alabama, more than 50 years since he took part in the Freedom Rides and the effort to desegregate interstate public transportation, he tells us the story.

Memorial to 16th Street Bombing victims. Photo by Troy Bonnes  The dynamite bomb that killed four young girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 went off during Sunday services.  14 year old Carolyn McKinstry survived.  On the bus, Utah State Student Mo Vance set the scene for our visit to Birmingham.  Carolyn McKinstry met us at the church to talk about her life since the bombings. Carolyn McKinstry was secretary of her Sunday school class in 1963. She too was just 14.  She had been chatting with her four friends as she carried attendance records to the church office. The next moment, the bomb cratered the bathroom and blew up the back of the church, a center of civil rights activism and training.  White racists targeted the Church for its leadership.  Back then Birmingham was known as "Bombingham" with 21 explosions

Patrick Okocha and Steve Scher on the streets of Montgomery, AlabamaPhoto by Troy Bonnes On the bus and on our way. We've been practicing an exercise called "Shallow and Deep." Ask a question that might just skim the surface. Then, go a little deeper with your second question.. Patrick Okocha is a mentor to the adults on the pilgrimage. He is a UW Communications major. He also writes for the Seattle Times. While we walked up Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama towards the state capital building, Patrick and Steve went shallow and deep. 

 At the 1st Baptist Church in Montgomery, we were met with hugs and handshakes and song. A swirling, all encompassing, all embracing song of love.  We toured the cold Tuscaloosa campus of the University of Alabama.A mound of rubble has been preserved above the Big Red Tide. It is a symbol of the Confederacy. They hold ceremonies on it.They rebuilt the home of the President to look like an antebellum mansion. They painted it a nice white. They gave a nice coat of white paint to the old slave quarters out back too.  We got on the bus for Montgomery, to see where Rosa Parks just got fed up with the bone-wearying oppressions of Jim Crow. Around the corner is the Equal Justice Initiative, housed on the wounded ground of an old slave warehouse, down the street from the old slave market, where skilled artisans brought $3,000.In America.  In the 1850's. Around the time Darwin and Wallace figured out the theory of evolution, efficient generators were turning mechani

On the bus from Atlanta to Tuscaloosa.

Prologue: Kane Hall February 23rd- Anticipation, Trepidation, Empowerment and SongMonday, February 23rd, at the UW's Kane Hall, where David Domke and friends deliver the last of 5 lectures on the Civil Rights era and Selma Alabama. 52 strong, we are getting ready to travel on a bus from Atlanta to Montgomery and points in between. Hundreds strong this evening, we are gathered to think about the history of the movement. But we are also gathered to be challenged to think about the movement today, because the battles are still being fought and the outcome is far from certain.   The bus is warming up. We mingle in an integrated waiting room.Black and white, young and old, we are joined by our hopes and fears, but we are together.  In a not too distant past, we would not have been together.  We would have waited apart, whites in one room, blacks in another.  This unnatural division, built on fear and hate, shaped the culture and shaped the souls of the people wh

The Legacy of Selma still drives America. 50 years ago, American citizens were being killed in the fight for the right to vote. During three marches in March of 1965, civil rights activists seeking the right to register in Alabama were met by tear gas and Billy clubs. Local police and State troopers beat the non-violent protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.  The televised violence galvanized the nation and Congress. President Johnson pushed through the 1965 voting rights act, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the countries history.But the battle for freedom is ongoing. Today, the courts have removed pieces of that legislation and some states are restricting access to the ballot box.  The streets of the nation are filled with protestors challenging the police shootings of young black men.  Over 5 lectures delivered in January and February 2015, the University of Washington’s Chair of the Communication Department, David Domke examined