The Post-Gazette's Erv Dyer went out on the road, visiting some of the cities and sites that are now part of the history of the American Civil Rights Movement.
As his journey came to a conclusion, Mr. Dyer filed a final dispatch about his discoveries, observations and impressions here at post-gazette.com.

June 18, 2005 / Bombed, whipped and beaten, he never wavered in the fight for freedom

Exhibiting the style, guts and grace that has made him a beloved figure in the civil rights movement, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth preached to a rapt group of travelers last night, making the Harriet Tubman auditorium at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati seem more like Sunday morning church ...

June 17, 2005

/ Memphis struggled to overcome stigma of King's murder

For many, this city will always be known as the place that killed a dreamer. Fred Davis, one of the first black city councilmen in Memphis and a soldier for justice, remembers the days shortly before the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. A week earlier, he had marched with King to fight for better wages for sanitation workers in a protest march marred by violence. The violence haunted King, who wanted to return to Memphis and make a difference...

June 16, 2005

/ Little Rock Nine sacrificed greatly to desegregate

The integration of Little Rock's Central High School l in 1957 by the students who became known as the Little Rock Nine was the most prominent national example of the integration movement and was a catalyst for the integration of other, previously segregated, public schools in the United States. About 10 blocks from the school yesterday, in a tiny community library, the group of civil rights travelers met two of the students who helped desegregate that Arkansas school nearly a half-century ago ...

June 15, 2005

/ One small girl remembers four who perished in blast

Going into Birmingham, Ala., I knew the most emotionally difficult history for me would be the story of the four little girls who died in a bomb blast as they were preparing for Sunday School on Sept. 15, 1963. I did not anticipate, however, how their stories would touch the soul of my niece, Marlissia, 10, who's making this journey with me ...

June 14, 2005

/ Travelers see God's hand in civil rights movement

The Rev. Bob Graetz stands in front of the small, white-washed, one-story flat he had called home for three years while living in Montgomery, Ala. A white Lutheran minister, he had pastored an all-black church. And, because it was 1955, and he had formed close bonds with his congregation and other black clergy around town, bombs were thrown at his home three times. Three times, he, his wife, Jeannie, and their small children, escaped them ...

June 13, 2005

/ Protest gets real on bridge in Selma

Corey Carrington, 17, sat on the bus and watched the documentary marking the march from Selma to Montgomery. He grimaced as he saw the young children and ladies being hit with nightsticks. He was discomforted watching the horses trample seniors ...

June 12, 2005

/ A lion who once preached to the chickens

By most accounts, Georgia Congressman John Lewis is a lion of the civil rights movement. As a young college student, he played a pivotal role in leading the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, which came to organize most of the student protest and sit-in encounters ...

June 11, 2005

/ 1960 sit-in offers travelers glimpse of 'unsung heroes' of civil rights movement

Dawn was breaking as two buses pulled out of Beaver Falls Area High School and headed out on a mission to revisit the road that lead to the modern-day civil rights movement. The group of 77 adults and children traveled for eight hours into the heart of the South.

Introduction:

/ Hearing the call of The Freedom Road

I missed the Civil Rights Movement. Not all of it, of course, there are a few scattered scenes that cling to my soul. But the whole of the movement and some of its greatest moments, which changed life for blacks and whites in this country, passed right over me ...