Travelers Guide to Civil Rights Jim Carrier Book TV February 2, 2004 53:00 - 1:42:46

Cybil Moses, Library of Congress reference librarian for African American History and Culture, did the introduction. Jim Carrier is the author of "Ten Ways to Fight Hate." Books like the Travelers Guide keeps the experience alive. Jim Carrier is a journalist and author of seven books including "The Ship and the Storm." His work has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times among others.

Description: Journalist Jim Carrier gives an illustrated tour of the historic places, people, and events during the struggle for racial equality from his book, "A Traveler's Guide to The Civil Rights Movement." The book includes descriptions of famous landmarks, people, and places throughout the United States, more specifically the South.

Fifty years ago an African American could not check out a book, try on clothes, mary a White person, go to school with Whites, or rent an apartment if there were one White in the building. The Civil Rights Movement resolved issues that our Founding Fathers didn't resolve. The Civil Rights Movement moved us from apartheid.

Carrier spoke of the silence about Blacks in the South. In Washington, D. C. one could find out more about Germans than African American history. Monuments say a lot. In the South there are 1,000 Confederate memorials. There are only 100 Civil Rights memorials with 24 museums opened and planned.

One-half of all slaves captured in Africa died in passage. Not only were lives lost, but opportunity and education was lost.

People are now engaged in the South's memory. Voters rejected an initiative that would have made the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, N. C. into a museum.

Ordinary Mississippians developed a plan to register voters, but there is not memorial at this house.

We were shown the store where Emmett Till allegedly made the "fresh" statement that led to his beating to death.

One of the gravestones we saw was of Robert Williams, now considered the Father of Black Power. Integration of the military was noted. Mary Bethune founded a Black College. We saw the bus that Rosa Parks rode in 1965.

Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity to give the Emancipation Proclamation. Our children must learn that the Civil Rights Movement did not start with Martin Luther King.

The nation and the south are night and day different from fifty years ago, but we are not acknowledging the difference. We are not celebrating the change.

At least half the sites in his book had no markings. We, as a country, haven't figured out how to acknowledge valor and courage without guns. It is time to put these memorials on permanent display.

Carriers' book is a book of stories and tries to preserve stories, to keep our artifacts, and to keep the places sacred.