I am obsessed with the Civil Rights Movement.

That may surprise some who know my upbringing.

I have never dealt with discrimination, murders, beatings, bigotry or racial intimidation. I was raised with race privileges that most whites don’t even know they have or appreciate.

I grew up in the ‘60s on a plantation outside of Richmond, Va. I attended an all-white, all-girls high school and college. To top that off, I was a Richmond debutante and spent my summers at the all-white Country Club of Virginia, where my parents were members.

Among the most important influences in my life were two black women -- Louise Black and Helen Hughes. Each was a live-in nanny who took care of me and my three siblings for years at separate times. Much of who and what I am and the mores I uphold were taught by them.

I don’t apologize for how I was raised. I consider myself fortunate.

My father taught us that blacks were like us, to by judged only by their goodness, not the color of their skin.

I married young, moved to Illinois then transplanted to Charlotte. It was here that I met Franklin McCain, one of the Greensboro Four. We became fast friends and during bi-monthly lunches discussed, and continue to discuss, the Civil Rights Movement.

He became my hero.

Imagine, I thought, having changed the course of history the way he and his three friends did in 1960. It continues to overwhelm me, and I find that I frequently implore him to “tell the story again.”

Our discussions led to a personal awakening about the African American struggle for equality. I read books, watched documentaries -- anything to learn more-- to really understand. I became a huge fan of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose wise and peaceful leadership ended segregation and forever changed the face of America.

In 1989 I ran for the Charlotte City Council and served for 14 years and as Mayor Pro Tem. On the Council I found I passionately supported the causes of the black community. I was the swing vote on the formation of Charlotte’s Citizens Review Board, the moratorium on the death penalty, and I pushed for significant funding for the Westside.

At a visit to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis last year I was repeatedly moved to tears over the bigotry, violence and injustice perpetrated against the black community, particularly in the south where I was raised.

Questions hammered my psyche: Why were such things allowed to happen nearly a century after the end of slavery? Why, even in Charlotte, were there inequities in the school system? Why? These questions continued to stir the far reaches of my mind and heart and my overriding belief in what is right and what is clearly wrong and horrendous.

Last October I received an invitation from the University of Virginia to join Julian Bond and his wife, Civil Rights attorney Pamela Horowitz, on a seven-day Civil Rights tour called “In the Footsteps of the Movement.” Bond is a professor at UVA and has led the tour for the last three years.

I jumped at the chance and registered immediately. We begin this important journey on Saturday. I will be documenting the steps of our trip in a column posted on this website, Qcitymetro.com.

Here is our itinerary:

We will visit sites in Atlanta, Tuskeegee, Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham.  Highlights include an interactive discussion between Congressman John Lewis and Julian Bond. We will attend church services at Ebenezer Baptist Church, once pastored by King, and in Montgomery meet with Fred Gray, veteran civil rights attorney who represented Rosa Parks. In Selma we will walk the Edmund Pettus Bridge and meet the ghosts of the thousands of blacks who marched peacefully, only to encounter billy clubs, tear gas and bull whips.

Why am I going?

I want the Civil Rights experience to impact my mind but also to reach even deeper within my soul. I want to understand what it was like. I know this tour will never provide me the real knowledge of what it was like to be black in the 1950s and 1960s on the frontline of change --simply because I wasn’t -- but I am confident I will garner a better understanding.

At the culmination of these seven days I want to be different, changed by walking in the footsteps of so many courageous men and women.

I hope you will join me daily.

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