- Judge, we're willing to be beaten for democracy!

And you misuse democracy in the street!

You beat people bloody in order that they will not have the privilege to vote!

- Only white males with property were allowed to vote.

And slaves was recognized as three-fifths persons.

- [Announcer] And for the first time, the community was confronted with Negroes in places where they had never been.

- So we sat right down with a boycott right up at the corner.

- [Announcer] The thousand Negroes and 400 white ministers and civil rights workers reach the end of the bridge where the cordon of troopers stand.

- I saw a sea of blue.

Blue helmets, blue state trooper uniform, blue state trooper cars parked parallel on each side of the highway.

- [Crowd] Now, now, now!

("Trouble In My Way" by Luther Barnes) ♪ So much trouble ♪ ♪ Trouble in my way ♪ ♪ I have to pray sometime ♪ ♪ I lay awake at night ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪ - [Andrew] Saturday, June 10th.

It's just shy of 6:00 AM and we're on the road.

Western Pennsylvania is really green this time of year and the soft light of morning makes everything look even greener.

This is the first day of the Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights bus tour and there's a lot of driving in front of us.

- That's everybody.

- [Guide] Welcome to the fifth annual Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights bus tour.

We're gonna have a lot of excitement ahead over the next eight days.

- [Announcer] By the late 1950's, other dissenting voices were finding a national audience.

- My name is Todd Allen and I am the director of the Common Ground Project, the Common Ground Project in partnership with PNC Financial Services.

This is the fifth anniversary for the bus tour and it's an opportunity to give participants a chance to, as I like to say, engage living history, particularly as it relates to the civil rights movement.

And so we take participants throughout the south on an eight day journey, which they get a chance to visit not only a lot of the key sites of the movement but a lot of the veterans of the movement as well.

- I came on this trip because I was born in the north.

I was born during the time that all the marches was going on.

- For the last five years, we've had a cross section of participants.

- Every so often, I just need to recommit, you know, 'cause I believe that all this work that we're doing is just a continuation of the work that was started.

- [Todd] I believe this year it ranges in age from 16 up until the mid seventies and kind of everything in between.

- Black history, African-American studies, is my passion.

And I feel that it's important for our children to know their history and their heritage.

- [Todd] People come from a variety of walks of life.

We have students, high school, college graduates.

We have a number of educators.

We have a number of professional persons.

It just really is a diverse mix.

- I grew up in the south.

I grew up just outside of Atlanta, and I grew up in an upper middle-class white suburban subdivision neighborhood, and I saw the KKK march.

And I saw these Good Ol' Boys flying the rebel flags.

And I said, "Well, that's not me.

"So I'm not racist."

- There's a lot of things that I don't know about the civil rights that I'd like to see.

It's just a good educational opportunity.

- This is the fourth time that I've been on this trip.

And it began as an ongoing interest in civil rights and social justice.

- [Guide] When we get to Greensboro, we're gonna make two stops.

Our first stop will be at the Woolworths store.

And then from there, we'll go over to the campus of North Carolina A & T. - Why don't you guys line up so we can take a quick photo.

Why don't we do it right here.

Move in a little bit.

Move in, move in.

- Say cheese.

- [Andrew] Saturday, June 10th.

We visited Greensboro, North Carolina.

This is where four young black men from A & T who were tired of racial segregation decided they were not gonna take it anymore.

- But I'm sorry, our management does not allow us to serve Negroes in here.

- They took seats at Woolworths segregated counters where blacks were not allowed.

This led to an explosion of sit ins there and in other cities.

I want to be among these four.

- [Announcer] Within a period of two months, the movement had spread to 65 cities, involving every Southern state with the exception of Mississippi.

- I went here, I lived here.

At 13, I got arrested.

I'm visiting my mother in Greensboro.

I live in New Jersey.

Because I was 13, they could not literally arrest me, but I have a affidavit that came from the juvenile courts that I treasure.

- So hold on, you're camera's gonna run out.

- Like wow, you know, just like four young boys willing to stand for a cause and spark up movements.

- I was in grade school.

I can remember it.

Come home every day, watching it on television.

- [Martin Luther King Jr.] Freedom and justice.

I have a dream.

- I watched on a black and white TV.

You never forget it.

You never forget it.

- [Martin Luther King Jr.] One day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

- Martin Luther King didn't see a boy named Lewis, but he did hear a voice telling him, "Martin, go down into south, "and tell the leaders to free the people "and let my people go."

(muffled blues music) - [Carol] Day two.

Sunday, June 11th.

Martin Luther king, Jr. What would the civil rights movement be without him, hearing his words and seeing him struggle moves and inspires me.

- You can only get much out of textbooks.

And what I've got today out of this whole, this whole museum, is more than what I've ever got throughout grade school, middle school, high school, 'cause it's really been locked away from today's youth.

And we need, we need to know this.

This is important to know.

You know what I mean?

- For some, it's an opportunity to really be introduced to this history for the first time.

- Please help me welcome Dr. Glenn Eskew.

(applauding) - [Todd] Some people, I know it's hard to believe in this day and age, but you say the the Little Rock Nine, they have no idea who you're talking about.

- What I want to talk about is the idea of a civil rights tour and the place of Birmingham within it.

- [Todd] Or Rev.

Fred Shuttlesworth.

They don't know who he is.

- And Rev.

Shuttlesworth and other veterans who participated in the demonstrations there in Birmingham dating back to 1956, indeed going back even further, were sloughing off the old white supremacy, racist society and culture, and demanding their rights as citizens.

- You couldn't vote in most instances.

You couldn't go to school.

There were all sorts of restrictions.

And not to mention the fact that if you spoke up or stood up, or challenged this unjust system, you would probably disappear.

- When they start talking about the movement, they start talking about the men, but they never give the women credit.

- It was the women that played, I think, an incredibly central role.

(all singing hymn) - [Presenter] Women filled those churches.

Had it not been for the women, I don't know what would have happened with that Montgomery Bus Boycott.

- [Commentator] You could not have had the success for example that you had in Montgomery without the women.

- They only give one woman credit, that's Rosa Parks.

Rosa may have been the woman who got tired.

The people were exhausted.

They were just worn out.

The entire city of Montgomery was worn out with the abuse from bus drivers, because they had police powers almost.

That's why the buses rode empty after Rosa didn't give up her seat.

- I grew up learning about them, and I was really under the impression that everybody knows this history.

Well, everyone doesn't know this history.

- We've gotta keep telling the story.

And if we don't keep telling the story, young people will not know, because many of our young people today, their parents don't even know, so they cannot tell them.

And those of us who are alive and still kickin' (laughs) should keep on informing the children, and their parents, and their parents' parents, that it was a great sacrifice, and it isn't over.

♪ We shall overcome someday ♪ - We're going today to Selma right now.

And keep in mind that there were people who offered themselves as sacrifices.

Some of them actually died for the sole purpose of opening up the right to vote for all people.

And this is sacred ground that you'll be walking on today.

- Sacred ground.

That's exactly how I felt at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

History happened here.

Beatings happened here, an attack on the American way of life.

I don't feel worthy to walk over this bridge.

I'm just walking to get to the other side.

They walked for the right to vote.

The first time when I came into Selma, when I rode across the bridge, I got chills.

It was just unbelievable crossing that bridge that so many people were beaten on.

- The very first time that I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that was the most emotional moment for me.

- [Announcer] From Selma's 14,000 Negroes, only a few more than 300 had been registered at the polls.

Selma sprang overnight from an obscure southern town to the front pages of world newspapers.

This church was headquarters in the Negro drive for the right to vote.

- This morning I'm not gonna take much time at all to introduce Dr. Frederick Reese, who was the president of the Dallas County Voters League at the time when things were going on.

I'm just gonna stop right there because I'm gonna let him tell his own story.

Dr. Reese.

(applauding) - On January the second 1965, in this church, Brown Chapel Church, we called that meeting.

At three o'clock that day, this church was packed.

There were those in the balcony, standing on the outside of this church, ready to go to jail if necessary, because no longer we were gonna let that injunction keep us from meeting and strategizing for progress, particularly for the right to vote.

- [Announcer] In 1965 in Selma, Alabama, a group of black citizens received less than full cooperation in their effort to register as voters.

- It was decided that we then would engage in a march from Selma to Montgomery on March the seventh, 1965.

Let me tell you what I saw on that day.

I saw a sea of blue.

Blue helmets, blue state trooper uniform, blue state trooper cars parked parallel on each side of the highway.

And the leader of that state trooper group gave orders for the state troopers to move in on the marchers.

And they moved in with their billy clubs clutched on both ends.

You've seen this picture, I guess.

And literally went down the line of marchers, toppling the marchers over, as if you would topple bowling pins in a bowling alley.

They then withdrew into their billy clubs and began to beat heads.

I saw blood flowing, pandemonium broke out in the crowd.

It was a state of disbelief that this was happening in these United States of America.

- When Dr. King came to Selma, things really heated up.

Really heated up.

We decided instead of marching once a week, we started marching every day, all day long.

We started going to jail.

I went to jail 13 times by the time I was 11.

It was almost always fun.

(laughing) - One by one, as these arrests mounted, people began to look upon that as a badge of real honor.

And at the mass meetings, people who had been arrested were praised and just worshiped as heroes and sheroes.

- You can turn your back on me, but you cannot turn your back upon the idea of justice.

- Today I really began to understand that these people we see as heroes of a movement that changed history were ordinary people who really just stood up where they were, when they were needed and when God called them.

- Let me walk you through to the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.

One of our primary goals for this museum was to identify and document people we call the foot soldiers of the voting rights struggle.

- It makes me proud of them that they were willing to fight and some of them die so that I could have the right to vote.

- I've been seeing how people gave their lives for that right, and people don't appreciate it and they don't use it.

So collectively we have no voice.

- [Group Member] Do I have to hold it down or something?

- Can you see the words?

- All right.

- You hear it beeping?

- Yeah.

- That was it.

- In 1985, a young black man named Michael Donald was actually lynched in Mobile, Alabama, by Ku Klux Klan.

- [Group Member] Tuesday, June 13th, after visiting the Southern Poverty Law Center.

- It was 1955 in the Mississippi delta.

Emmett Till, a 14 year old boy, had said something to a white woman.

(soft guitar music) - [Amy] Emmett Till's mother wanted an open casket at her son's funeral, so that people could see the reality of what had happened.

The reality of the fruit of racism, hatred, and fear.

And as I looked at the wall of the 40 martyrs of the civil rights movement, that reality was screaming out.

- People were coming here from all over the world, really making a mecca to the beginnings, to the place where the civil rights movement began.

And as I moved all around the south, I've discovered that at least half of the spots that were famous were not even marked.

I think it's important for people to go and visit civil rights sites in the same way that they go to memorials in Washington, DC.

These were, even though they were modest sites, maybe at times a cafe, or a street corner, or bus stop, these were as momentous as places in Congress or the Supreme Court.

And I think people need to go there.

First of all, to learn the history.

Secondly, I think, to fully appreciate the atmosphere in which the heroism occurred.

- The emotion that you feel when you actually go to some of these places.

And especially when you meet the people that made this history.

There's a great feeling of pride in knowing that it was successful.

There's a lot of deep sadness knowing that many people didn't make it through.

And some of those that did have been scarred.

- People really won't understand American history to their, I think, heart and soul, until they go and visit these spots.

- I read about it in the papers and it is, I'm actually reliving it.

And a lot of emotions are coming up, different feelings.

And I think every young person should take this tour.

Everybody should see this.

It's unbelievable.

We learned about the civil rights movement in school.

And like, it's nothing compared to what we're seeing here, like actually being here, and being able to feel what the people have felt, listening to their stories.

(soft guitar music) ("Amazing Grace") ♪ Amazing grace ♪ ♪ How sweet the sound ♪ - When the lights went out and everything went black, the clock stopped.

Here is where four little girls died.

And that happened Sunday, September 15, 1963.

The four girls were in an area that is now our kitchen at the time of the bombing.

They were in the direct vicinity of that blast.

- Denise, if she was living today, would be 54 years old.

The church bombing was on September the 15, 1963.

Had she lived 'til November the 17, she would have been 12 years old.

She was our only child at the time.

You know, it was 14 years after the church bombing before anybody was tried.

(blues guitar music) - This is the inevitable result of hatred, of racism, of fear.

the murders of children, of white sympathizers, of those fighting for basic human rights.

And that is what this trip has been about as a whole, too.

It has forced me to see history that I don't want to see.

- One of the events that has stayed with me is the fact that it was a children's movement that broke the back of segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, in May of 1963.

- Sometimes we think that was a movement of just these older adults.

And even though the adults weren't as old as we sometimes think, but children were involved as well.

("This Little Light of Mine") The reason Birmingham was such a successful campaign was because the children were involved.

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪ - Members of SCLC who had been working with youth hit on the idea.

This is their struggle, too.

- And I'll just simply make it plain by saying this.

Were it not for the children, we would not have won the civil rights.

- Dr. King didn't support the idea.

Indeed, Malcolm X ridiculed it, letting children do what men should be doing.

And those youth, who had been attending these mass meetings and singing, marched out the doors of 16th Street Baptist church that May day in 1963 and changed the history of the country, and indeed of the world.

♪ Let it shine ♪ - This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.

♪ This little light of mine ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪ ♪ This little light of mine ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪ - [Andy] Thursday, June 16th.

They were just kids, kids who desired an education, yet the members of the Little Rock Nine were also revolutionaries.

They willingly sacrificed their extracurricular activities, friendships and quietude, in exchange for jeers, threats, violence, and social isolation.

Why?

So the city of Little Rock schools would be integrated.

- It's just a little haunting, I think, to be on the same grounds where you see pictures of these nine students who pretty much were tormented, spit upon, and really just in some way sacrificed themselves to make progress in our country.

(shouting) - [Group Member] I can only guess what it must've felt like to march up those steps each day to a soundtrack of epitaphs, alone save for an armed soldier assigned as a guard.

- I think it would have took an effect on my personal life and experience with other races.

- I don't think I would have not went, just because I would have been standing up for everybody else who didn't get the opportunity to go.

But I think it would have been difficult.

- I don't think I would've stopped attending the school, just to show how strong I was myself.

- [Martin Luther King Jr.] We can never be satisfied, as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating, "For whites only."

- Now, as you all were coming up the courtyard area, you may have noticed that this was once the Lorraine Motel.

It is the site that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4th of 1968, standing outside on the balcony outside Room 306.

Where the wreath is hanging is the actual spot where Dr. King was standing.

("Standing In The Need Of Prayer" by John P. Kee) ♪ It's me oh Lord ♪ ♪ Standing in the need of prayer ♪ - [Carol] Day seven, the Lorraine Hotel.

I have been moved by the many places we've been, but it would seem that the places of Martin Luther King's birth and death are the places that move me to the page.

- [Martin Luther King Jr.] No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

(cheering and applauding) - [Narrator] We as a people are still not freed.

No longer are we bound by the physical chains or legal inequality.

The ties that bind us now are more insidious.

One has to but look in the mirror to see his jailer, for it is the landscape of the mind that is in desperate need of emancipation.

- Free at last.

Free at last.

Thank God almighty.

We are free at last.

(cheering and applauding) - Our generation today could never do what they did, 'cause I don't think we'd step up like how they did, and like accomplish what they accomplished.

If you look in today's society, there's a lot of black on black violence.

And you know what?

Dr. King, although he did and planned to do a lot of great things, I, in this generation, I don't see much of it being followed.

- We've come far, but we have a long, long way to go, especially today when I see us killing each other.

And that hurts.

That hurts.

(soft blues guitar music) (chanting and shouting) - [Salynn] I got on the bus hoping to look like I was just a white woman riding a bus.

- Salynn McCollum, a young white college student, heard about this thing called the Freedom Rides.

- The intention was to travel across the country as an interracial group and desegregate everything.

Desegregate the waiting rooms and the buses themselves.

It was a sunny day.

When we passed over the Tennessee line, we began to see people lining, men lining the roads with shotguns.

As we got into the Birmingham bus station, there were crowds and crowds of people, as well as a number of policemen.

They called one of the fellows to the front of the bus, didn't like what he had to say, and they began to beat him.

So I decided to play the role of the southern white lady.

And I began to scream.

"Oh no, don't do that.

"Oh no, I can't stand that.

"Don't, please don't."

And they got all flustered.

So they just dropped Bill on the floor and they said, "Oh lady, we're not hurting anybody."

- Her story is just an excellent testimony of one who's willing to give up the safety and security of home because you see an injustice and you want to go out and make things right.

- [Salynn] We weren't any different than you are.

None of us were totally brave or totally anything.

We were just kids that believed something very strongly.

We believed in the dignity of every human being.

("Trouble In My Way" by Luther Barnes) - One, two, three.

- Everything is so emotional and some things are depressing.

And like, we dropped the ball now.

It's time to pick it up and, you know, carry on.

- Of course, of course.

Bless you.

Keep up the good work.

- Thank you.

- All right.

And you all continue what we started.

- In spite of over 50 years of that struggle, we have not completely overcome.

We've come a long way, but believe me when I tell you we still have a long way to go.

- Mrs. Liuzzo of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a housewife and a mother of five.

That's her right there.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- Thank you.

I know, I had never heard her story before.

- And you're from Grand Rapids?

- Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna bring that back.

- Please, make people know her.

She gave, you know, her life.

- There is still in the hearts of people this reservoir of racism and classism and sexism and genderism and, you know, all of these things that were used, that we use to put down other people.

So that's what we're fighting today.

- Get her if you miss me.

(laughs) - There are people who died, sweated blood, tears, and laid a foundation that we're able to grow upon.

And you owe those people to take advantage of the opportunities that you have.

You also owe the future generations to lay something new, to build upon foundations not break them down.

- Thank you for that very inspirational talk.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- I really enjoyed this-- - And I want you to be successful.

Okay?

- Thank you.

- I want people to come away with a sense that this is our history.

This isn't African-American history.

This is American history.

And in a big sense, it's world history.

(choir clapping and singing)