In 1955, Bob Graetz, a young Lutheran minister from West Virginia, moved to Montgomery, Ala., a white preacher settling into an all-black church and, as it would turn out, the swirl of history.

	Doral Chenoweth III Robert and Jeannie Graetz in their home. Robert is holding a silver tray given to him by Martin Luther King Jr. and his family. Click photo for larger image.

The Lutherans required that pastors be college-educated, and there were few black Lutherans who met that qualification a half-century ago. Graetz, who deeply believed that Christian living meant battling discrimination, was one of the few white Lutherans willing to serve a Negro congregation.

Fighting discrimination was not new to the 26-year-old minister when he went deep into Dixie. But he could little dream of how his life would change.

All was quiet when he arrived at 200-member Trinity Lutheran. But within months, his congregation and others would launch the Montgomery bus boycott, the yearlong protest against the city's public transportation policy that forced 50,000 blacks to sit in the back of the bus.

Graetz's home would be bombed. Although he was home with his wife and two toddlers, they escaped injury. His neighbor was Rosa Parks, the black seamstress whose refusal to give up her front seat ignited the boycott.

Graetz befriended another young minister active in the cause -- Martin Luther King Jr.

Once aflame, the boycott fueled King's career and opened wide the gates on a rapidly expanding civil rights movement. When it was over, blacks were free to take any seat on the bus.

Now 76 and living near Columbus, Ohio, Graetz said the boycott was able to form under the radar and build momentum because of two misconceptions held by white racists: one, that blacks couldn't organize; and two, that all whites liked things the way they were.

They didn't. Graetz, who was active in the boycott planning, said, "Some whites told me it was a wonderful thing I was doing."

Many of the people who witnessed this turn of history are elderly or deceased. To keep the story alive, Graetz wrote "A White Preacher's Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott," and will release a new book in 2005 marking the jubilee year of the boycott.

For eight years, Graetz has been a part of an annual bus tour, "Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights."

The weeklong tour takes children and adults, blacks and whites for a ride through the South: Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Greensboro, N.C.

The tour takes in numerous civil rights landmarks, speaking with people who lived the moments. It stops at the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Ala., site of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, when Alabama state troopers and white supremacists attacked 600 peaceful marchers; Dexter Avenue, the Montgomery, Ala., street where King began his ministry; and Little Rock, Ark., where nine black children desegregated a high school with the help of the National Guard in 1957.

"These tours are important," Graetz said, "because a lot of people nowadays have forgotten and many have never heard anything about the movement. This is one way of keeping history alive."

Todd Allen, a Geneva College communications professor, is one of the tour organizers this year. Born in 1969, he came of age as the civil rights movement was fading, but his high school American history class fanned his interest.

In 2001, a friend asked Allen to put together a reading list for the tour and to come along. The friend sent him Graetz's book, and although Allen had been to the South, the places and people that the minister wrote about whetted his passion again. "With folks passing off the scene, we really are in danger of history being lost," he said. "There are some classes I teach and kids don't even know what Jim Crow is."

The tour is growing. The first year, 13 people went, the second year about 30. This year, two buses are being chartered.

Younger riders, Allen said, get a deeper appreciation for the everyday people. Many of the civil rights participants were teenagers or young adults. They weren't seeking to be great, just trying to make a difference.

"I think they learn about obstacles and how young people overcame them, what lessons we can apply to our lives and communities and how it's important to take a stand."

The trip, June 11 to 19, is sponsored by PNC Financial Services Group, the Coalition for Racial and Ethnic Diversity and the Big Beaver Falls Area School District.

The cost of the tour is $600 per person and includes lodging, transportation, museum and tour fees. Meals are not included. A nonrefundable deposit of $100 is due at registration. For more information, call 724-847-6783; or 724-544-6126.