It's called the Voices of Civil Rights Bus Tour.

The bus will be parked in the 1300 block of Clay Street in front of the Federal Building from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday to record reflections and experiences.

It is part of the Art & Soul festival, which costs $5 to enter.

A bus equipped with photographers, videotape-recording equipment and writers left Washington, D.C., on Aug. 3 for a 70-day trip to 35 cities in 22 states. Oakland, Modesto and Los Angeles are the only stops in California.

When the project is completed, there will be a presentation to the Library of Congress. The History Channel, a cable television network, has been recording the tour.

"We selected Oakland because of its diversity, and there's many stories here," said Quincy Campbell, a regional representative for AARP, a tour co-sponsor. "We want people to show up and tell us their stories so it can be recorded.

"We are looking for people who are 50 years old and over. The stories are out there, and we need to hear from people. It's important to document all these stories because they are all part of a very important movement."

Other sponsors are the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Library of Congress.

Part of the bus route runs through small cities around Jackson, Miss., the same route traveled by the so-called Freedom Riders, young blacks and whites, including some from northern cities, who came to the South to set up voter registration drives for African Americans who had been barred from voting by local officials.

Tour participants have included Kay Golden of Charlotte, N.C., a white woman who talked about her days working in a restaurant in 1962 when blacks were never served but the Freedom Riders were coming. "One white waitress, Pat, said she'd quit rather than serve blacks," Golden recalled. However, Pat did serve the Freedom Riders. "It's OK, they're nice," Pat would say later, and she held up a dollar tip that left her surprised.

LaVon Bracy of Orlando, Fla., who is black, reflected on 1964, 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down separate but equal schools for blacks and whites. Her father, the Rev. Thomas Wright, was president of the local NAACP and needed someone to integrate Gainesville High School.

"Send me. I'll go to the white school," Bracy recalled saying. "I must promote the cause ... sacrifice my senior year for the cause ... I must."

The Oakland Tribune: Cityside
Leanne McLaughlin, Managing Editor
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