If you ever have the time to visit only one civil rights site, go directly to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Part museum, part "living institution," it sits like a small college across from Kelly Ingram Park, where more than 1,000 children were arrested in protests against local segregation in May 1963.

The idea to have the children protest, a stroke of genius by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), flooded the jails and brought national criticism of the police, and local and state governments. President John F. Kennedy dispatched 3,000 soldiers to stave off riots and enforce a desegregation agreement. Statues in the park today represent the German shepherds and high-pressure firehoses that terrorized peaceful protesters and shocked millions watching the nightly news.

The institute's museum captures the entirety of the civil rights struggle with an encyclopedic flair. We pace through the exhibit halls, giving ourselves over to the sights, sounds, and videos. The museum's strong sense of narrative helps us sort the many stories we have absorbed this week into one overriding story whose themes are struggle and triumph. We will no doubt draw on the memories of this week in later years when we need to summon a source of inspiration or a jolt of encouragement as we go on to face new struggles.

We have come this week in many roles -- as allies, activists, and friends, but also as historians.

Mayor James Perkins, Jr., Selma, Ala.

"I personally feel privileged to have lived through the Jim Crow era," says James Perkins, Jr., the first black mayor of Selma, Ala.

The 61 of us on the journey are at City Hall, bright and early, listening to a man who has achieved a position that he could hardly dream about when he was growing up. When he was born, Selma's voting rolls had 100 white persons for every black person, even though the city had a slight black majority. Now James Perkins, Jr., is the mayor.

His assistant has rushed in to hurry him to his next appointment, but Mayor Perkins nods her off. He enjoys talking and he's just getting comfortable. He strides across the room and fields a question.

Someone in our group asks: "What do you mean when you say you felt 'privileged' to have lived through Jim Crow? I don't see how that can be."

The avuncular mayor settles in closer to explain. He witnessed firsthand the pain, the humiliation of that era. He witnessed the heroism of the actors of the civil rights movement, and feels strongly that he is one of many who has inherited the fruit of their sacrifice. He considers himself fortunate. He harbors no hostility, no hatred of obstructionists to civil rights. He's done fighting. "I may not be able to stop the fight, but I can stop fighting," he says. "I can only control myself, my own actions. And that's all I need to concern myself with."

The incumbent he defeated in 2000 was the mayor every year but one since 1964, a former segregationist who was considered unbeatable. Mayor Perkins had run against him twice before, in 1992 and 1996. He was tempted to give up. But he ran again. He kept running. For ten years he ran for office. He knew change didn't happen overnight; he knew the incumbent had a towering advantage. Taking a page from the book of his childhood heroes, he persevered and ultimately won . . . and won again. He was reelected in 2004.

His assistant appears again at a side door and gives him a look that says hurry up. The mayor looks like a child being called home for dinner. He grins, stands up and wishes us well. He has opened up to a busload of strangers who are ineligible to vote for him and are not likely to return to the city he has labored hard to improve. But his gains from this conversation are greater than the ordinary: the lessons from the civil rights movement need to be passed down, and he's proud to do so. All at once, we stand and give him an ovation that rocks the building. The mayor walks out waving through the side door like the star that he is.

We collect our breath and hurry down the stairs to the bus. One girl from Oklahoma beams and says what we all are thinking, "I wish he would run for president!"

Christopher and Maxine McNair, Birmingham, Ala.

That evening we dine in the company of two more individuals whose legacies began in the civil rights era.

Christopher and Maxine McNair lost their 11-year-old daughter, Denise, in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. Denise was one of four little girls who died in the church basement. It took 10 years before the white supremacist in charge of the bombing was convicted; his co-conspirators have never faced charges.

At spacious Chris McNair Studios, the family prepares a homestyle dinner for us and then shows Spike Lee's "Four Little Girls," the only documentary the McNair family and the other parents have permitted to be made about the girls and their murder.

After the movie, Mr. and Mrs. McNair, a loving couple who have been through it all together, answer questions. They do this regularly, whenever they can, to pass along their witness to that era and to that signature tragedy.

They talk about their lives after the bombing -- Mr. McNair became one of the first African Americans to serve in the Alabama legislature. For 15 years, he was the Jefferson County commissioner. They went on to have two more daughters after Denise died. They pause before answering one question: "When and how did you tell your younger daughters that they had an older sister who was dead?"

The McNairs puzzle over this one. They don't remember exactly. They think some more. No, they don't recall when and how. "We told them. They knew. But we didn't wash their faces with it," says Mr. McNair. His wife nods her head in agreement.

Like Mayor Perkins, the McNairs reveal a nobility that eschews vengeneance and avoids dwelling on past wrongs. For some of us, this is initially hard to accept -- we've been affected by the images of hatred and violence we've seen in the museums and documentaries. There's something undeniable inside that wants to confront and battle. But if we felt that way this morning, it's been dispelled by the even-tempered words of these three exemplars who bear wounds from that era and forge ahead to pass on history and grace.

Unsung heroes

Our appreciation for the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement grows at the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma. It's a tender, homegrown museum that exists because of the efforts and pride of community volunteers. Our tour guide advises us not to touch anything -- not because the items have monetary value, but because they might fall and hit someone in the head. Every minute or so he towels himself off in the afternoon heat. Half of us slump to the floor as we let his words take us back to the cauldron that was Selma, 1965.

In a glass case in the lone air-conditioned room is an exhibit that looks like it'd be more comfortable in a natural history museum. I walk closer and see plaster molds . . . of footprints. Our guide explains. People who walked in one of the three Selma-to-Montgomery marches (only the final, historic march with an estimated 25,000 people was allowed to reach its destination) can walk in today take their shoes off, sit a spell, and have a cast made.

I think of the fears these marchers-turned-curators had to confront when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed them back in 1965:

"I know not what lies ahead of us. There may be beatings, jailings, tear gas. But I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience! There is nothing more tragic in all this world than to know right and not to do it."

The individuals who labored behind the scenes have their legacies preserved, too. At the museum's entrance is a wall dense with note cards, each one a handwritten, personal account of that person's offering -- as cook, as comforter, as chauffer.

One of our youth leaders alerts us to a memorial for Viola Liuzzo, the 39-year-old white Unitarian Universalist mother of five who was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members while driving back to Montgomery after the third march. She came all the way down from Detroit, Mich. Two electric candles border her photograph. Some in our group take time to write in the journals we provided on the first day. We observe other memorials to those who practiced nonviolence to the very end.

If there's any doubt that this is a museum that celebrates the unsung over the famous, I spy a lopsidedly hung photo of then-President Bill Clinton visiting the museum. But no one else notices the photo -- it's tucked away in a spot few are likely to see -- and it goes unremarked.

The last meal of Rev. James Reeb


That evening, we dine over rich Southern food in a Selma restaurant famous because of another Unitarian Universalist martyr. Walker's Cafe was the site of the last meal of Rev. James Reeb, a father of four from Boston who heeded King's call to Selma. As Reeb and two other Unitarian ministers, all wide-eyed visitors to a dangerous land, left the restaurant, four white supremacists tracked them. In an ambush, Reeb was clubbed from behind and died; the other two ministers were taunted and beaten yet lived.

As with so much else on this journey, we tend toward silence as we take in these stories. Later, in small groups, we listen to each other share our personal reactions.

Entering a wilderness

Rev. Marti Keller, our trip chaplain, had put us on notice that we would be entering a wilderness, and we have, in every sense of the word. At this late hour, after 10 p.m., it's the physical wilderness that worries us.

The journey's participants, after an emotional day, are at rest in a motel. Rev. Marti sits in our rented van, along with UUSC staff members Kim McDonald and Anna Bartlett, as the four of us drive through the humid Alabama night. Fifteen minutes ago, I had asked for directions to the nearest grocery store. But we haven't seen a hint of civilization in at least ten minutes, save for the road itself, a narrow 2-lane blacktop with deep ditches at each side and utter darkness beyond. We haven't seen another car this whole time. An eeriness we all sense halts our conversation. The gas gauge is on "E." I twist the AM dial and find a Dick Clark Five song that comes in staticky and hard to hear over the cicadas.

We're all thinking the same thing. We can't help it. The night is suddenly fraught with imagined dangers. It's 1965 again -- lurking in cars unseen to us are policemen-by-day, Klansmen-by-night. I think of the activists who arrived in Alabama, up to their ears in good intentions but unprotected and vulnerable. I think back to the last moments of Viola Liuzzo as the headlights from behind whited out her rearview mirror just before her car was bumped for the first time.

Rev. Marti breaks the silence and recommends that we turn around. I know I shouldn't do this, but I look into the rearview mirror and let fly a fib: "Oh, my. We're getting pulled over and I'm not even speeding. I swear I'm not speeding." All three of them in the van declare "No!" and whip their heads around.

It takes a moment for them not to be mad at me. We turn around, back to Selma, and decide that next year's journey needs a nighttime drive into the wilderness.

Atlanta. Monday, July 11.

Making the most of our extra day in Atlanta, we head to the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. Many of the adults remember him warmly. To the youth, he is an enigmatic figure. Some wonder which was more difficult to overcome in running for the presidency: being a humble peanut farmer or possessing such notable decency. We gaze at his Nobel Peace Prize and admire his post-presidential career as a human rights advocate. In his farewell address to the nation, Carter wrote:

"America didn't invent human rights.
Human rights invented America."

In the afternoon, we return to the King Center, where none of us yesterday had time to tour his birth home. Only guided tours are available and everyone in my group of ten falls under the spell of our National Park Service guide. She weaves the story of the young King, describing his day-to-day life as a short, somewhat chubby boy, quick and clever and curious. She tactfully deflects questions about anything in King's life happening after the age of 12, keeping the focus on his youth and on this thriving black neighborhood, where doctors and lawyers lived across the street from blue-collar professionals in smaller homes.

In this home, she does not talk about threats to the King family. She points to the kitchen table, where over supper King and his siblings were to present a story from each day's paper and then advocate a position relating to it -- in an era when no children, especially black children, were to talk with their parents as equals. She points to his tiny toy collection. She shows the small bed he shared with his brother and the corner of the house where he hid to avoid doing the dishes. In this home she preserves the memory of the little boy before he grew up. All the trouble? All the hardship?-- that came later, and it's not welcome talk here in this home.

Atlanta. Sunday, July 10.

A hard rain is falling outside the King Center. The tomb of our nation's greatest civil rights leader lies in a reflecting pool beaded by an onslaught of raindrops. Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he was pastor, is crowded with quiet folks listening to a looped audiotape of one of his sermons. The rain hastens and we receive bad news: Hurricane Dennis has closed every place on our itinerary tomorrow. Montgomery, Alabama, is for all intents and purposes shut down as it braces for the storm. Even the hotel we reserved has called to plead with us not to come.

In the interests of safety and common sense, we have no choice but to stay in Atlanta another day. The storm won't be so bad here. Everyone feels disappointment but we promise to make up as much of the schedule as we can.

We pause to reflect on the generosity of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta (UUCA). In the morning, a caravan of UUCA volunteers shuttled us in small groups from our hotel to its doors, then after an inspirational service and a hearty lunch, here to the King Center. We were privileged to view a small portion of the documentary UUCA has made to commemorate its own history, dating to 1879 on the Universalist side and 1882 on the Unitarian side. Always a civil rights leader, the church by 1957 was not just desegregated; it was integrated. It had a strong relationship with Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Dr. King was a pulpit guest on occasion.

Montgomery. Tuesday, July 12.

It's our busiest day and everyone is scrambling in the early morning to round up their friends, their luggage and their friends' luggage so we can board the bus and head to Montgomery. Continental breakfasts are gulped down. Room keys cover the front desk.

The Rosa Parks Library and Museum is a testament to what can follow from one brave, individual act. The Montgomery Bus Boycott followed from this 42-year-old African-American seamstress' polite, steadfast refusal in 1955 to surrender her seat for a white man on a public bus. The boycotters' victory and ultimate desegregation of the buses gave the young leaders of the civil rights movement a tremendous feeling of momentum.

Just before noon, in 90-degree heat, we sit on the lawn of a colleague human rights organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and hear about its legal strategies for fighting racism and hate groups, and promoting tolerance. An energetic conversation follows, notwithstanding the heat and lack of sleep (for some).

The Montgomery Unitarian Universalist Fellowship had planned to host a 3-hour dinner and discussion the evening before. But the congregation won't let the hurricane interfere with its generosity -- its members are kind and flexible enough to prepare lunches to go. We feel awful making only a pit stop while receiving red-carpet treatment. The peanut butter sticks to the roof of our mouths while we give our thanks and climb back up the steep steps of the bus. We count off -- we think we have everybody. Our driver moves us on to Selma.

Atlanta. Saturday, July 9.

All 61 of us have made it safely to Atlanta. From all across the United States, we have assembled, young and old, strangers to each other, to evoke the past. We will visit important civil rights sites and hear from extraordinary individuals who were involved in the struggle for justice in some way, shape, or form. We will have daily reflections and journaling, and time to share with one another.

After six days of journeying through Georgia and Alabama, we will return to Atlanta to translate our newfound inspiration into action by volunteering with the Georgia Citizens’ Coalition on Hunger. We will work on their organic farm and register people to vote in surrounding neighborhoods. The workcamp promises to be a unique and empowering experience grounded in the principles of human rights and social justice.

We cram into our motel's lone meeting room and take turns introducing ourselves and saying why we chose to make this journey. Some adults grew up amid Northern privilege, didn't talk about the Civil Rights Movement in their homes, didn't pay attention to it in the news, and now, 40 years later, are trying to redress that loss. Some of the youth feel short-changed by their textbooks, which cover Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but little else with any depth. Some youth are here because their parents and religious educators recommended it.

Rev. Marti Keller, our trip chaplain, explains that this is journey is not merely physical -- it's an emotional journey, as well. The meeting adjourns and participants mingle. Today, we exchange names. By trip's end, we will exchange e-mail addresses.