Inspiring the next generation

The New York Times today offers an interesting story on how some Southern leaders launched a bus tour from Tennessee through Alabama in an attempt to inspire the next generation of civil rights activists.

About 100 students from Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University, Fisk University and American Baptist College accompanied veterans of the civil rights movement, some of whom came close to death in the bloody confrontations over interstate travel in the South.

The buses served as rolling classrooms, leaving Nashville early Saturday for Montgomery and arriving in Birmingham on Saturday evening. The students, along with faculty members, historians and others, returned to Nashville on Sunday.

Among the "instructors" on the bus tour were U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, and former Kennedy aide and publisher John Siegenthaler.