Well, I was killed in 1963 one Sunday morning in Birmingham

June 19, 2017 10:53 AM

John Fea, Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, documents his experience with the Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour on his blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

The above link is a compilation of tour-related posts. If you would prefer to read them in order:

* Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights Tour: Day 1
* The Amazing Juanita Jones Abernathy
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 2
* Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights Tour: Day 3
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 4
* Historical Thinking at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 5
* More on the Civil Rights Movement and America as a “Christian Nation”
* The Birmingham Bible-Reading Crusade of 1946
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 6
* Are Students *Still* Ignorant of the History of the Civil Rights Movement?
* Song of the Day
* Lynching in America
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 7
* Memphis Cotton for Bibles
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 8
* Returning to the Roots of the Civil Rights Tour: Day 9

"I am not a big fan of expressing my feelings or talking about emotions as it relates to the way I approach the past, but I think it is fair to say that I am leaving this trip inspired by the Christian and non-violent approach to Civil Rights promoted by Martin Luther King, James Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, John Lewis, the Greensboro Four, and many, many others."--John Fea

posted by MonkeyToes (3 comments total)

The title of Fea's blog is drawn from the title of his scholarly biography of Philip Vickers Fithian, an educator and Revolutionary War officer from New Jersey who died during the War.
posted by mwhybark at 12:01 PM on June 19, 2017

Thanks, OP! Don't have time to explore this now but will later.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:00 PM on June 19, 2017

I was struck by the single image included in Fea's post on lynching: A wall of jars, each holding dirt from lynchings in Alabama. Just Alabama? My God, so many jars...
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:17 PM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]