New Orleans high school students learn about civil rights movement on unique bus tour

Jet, April 28, 1997

For a fourth year, students and teachers from various New Orleans high schools traced the Civil Rights Movement via bus.

This year's Majic Bus Civil Rights Tour, organized and started by White University of New Orleans American History professor Douglas Brinkley, traveled to 13 locations.

Students and teachers trace the Civil Rights Movement on the Majic Bus, which is named after a song by the rock group, The Who.

Eighteen specially selected students and eight teachers were on the two-week, 2,500-mile civil rights tour that took them to historical places.

Brinkley believes that his living history travels teach lessons that are invaluable and can't be matched in the classroom. He used money from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and other small grants and contributions.

As director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies, he uses his connections to locate key people and sites for his tours.

People visited and stops on the Majic Bus Civil Rights Tour this year included:

1. St. Martinville, LA-St. John sugar plantation and sugar mill as an example of Southern living.

2. Shreveport, LA-Gravesite of blues performer Huddie Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly.

3. Hope, AR-Birthplace of President Bill Clinton.

4. Little Rock, AR-Central High School and Melba Beales, one of the "Little Rock Nine" who made the historical integration of the school in 1957.

5. Memphis, TN-National Civil Rights Museum and the Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, who was with the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was assassinated.

6. Clarksdale, MS-Delta Blues Museum.

7. Birmingham, AL-Civil Rights Institute and Mary King, organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

8. Atlanta, GA-Civil rights symposium with former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and former Georgia state representative and state senator Julian Bond.

9. Montgomery, AL-Southern Poverty Law Center and its head, Morris Dees.

10. Tuskegee, AL-Tuskegee University and Carver Museum.

11. Selma, AL-National Voting Rights Museum.

12. Piney Woods, MS-Piney Woods Country Life School, one of six private Black boarding schools in the nation.

13. Jackson, MS-Civil rights activists Robert Moses, James Meredith and Charles Evers.