For the second year in a row I am embarking on a Civil Rights tour with the iconic Julian Bond, who’s now a professor of Afro-American and African history at the University of Virginia.

Last year Bond took us on a tour of the Deep South, where the Civil Rights Movement was born. We visited cities including Birmingham, Tuskegee, Selma and Atlanta. This year we stop in Memphis, Little Rock, Clarksdale, Natchez and New Orleans.

We are a diverse group, 32 people. We include the first lady of Oregon, the brother of the current president of Harvard, a political contributor to POTUS radio and several Ph.D.’s. Geographically, we run the gamut from New York to Los Angeles, St. Louis, Belgium, Chicago, Austin and, of course, Charlotte.

On Saturday – day 1 of our tour -- we gathered in a hotel conference room in Memphis to hear Michael Cody, our first speaker. Cody was an attorney for Martin Luther King Jr. during the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968, and his recounting of his interactions with King in the days before King’s assassinated kept us on the edge of our seats.

As you may recall, King had come to Memphis to support a strike by black sanitation workers after years of discrimination and poor working conditions. He wanted to hold a march to support the workers, but city officials got a federal injunction to block it. King’s reaction was to disregard the injunction. He felt it was important to stage a march in Memphis in preparation for a “poor people’s march” in the nation’s capital. He felt that if he couldn’t do it in Memphis then he would be ineffective in D.C.

In stepped Cody and a team of lawyers to represent King. It was April 3, 1968, the day before King was killed. Cody recounted how he and two other lawyers sat knee-to-knee across from King, Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young at the Lorraine Motel, discussing the strategy for court the next day.

That night at the Mason Temple, King was asked to speak to a group of sanitation workers. Because he was exhausted and discouraged, he asked Young to stand in. Young called King later to say that the people wanted no one but King, so King relented and agreed to speak. Cody was present that night.

Cody said it was raining and extremely hot inside the Temple. Abernathy introduced King, who, without notes, because he hadn’t planned to speak, began the famous speech that would be his last:

“...I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land; I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. And I am happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man; Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Cody said the speech was so momentous that the “hair stood on the back of my neck.” At the end of his talk, King collapsed in a chair as if all the energy had been sucked out of him.

The next day, April 4, Cody and two other lawyers spent most of the day arguing in federal court against the injunction. Abernathy was present, representing King. After arguments, a judge agreed to lift the injunction, and Cody drove Abernathy back to the Lorraine Motel. They were exuberant because of the win. But by the time Cody got home, he heard on the radio that King, the man of destiny, had been shot and was dead.

Day 2:
On Sunday we spent the morning at a worship service at Christ Missionary Baptist Church. We had lunch afterward in the church’s fellowship hall, where Bond gave a lecture on King and the sanitation workers’ strike.

That afternoon we toured the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. Although it was my third time visiting the museum, I once again teared up at the sight of King’s room and the balcony where he was shot. How could this great man who was risking his life daily to make our country a better place experience such a violent death?

What a tremendous loss.

This image, taken from the balcony where King was shot, shows one of the last sights seen by the civil rights leader. (Photo: Lynn Wheeler)

Next on our tour: Little Rock, Ark. Highlights will include meeting Minnijean Brown-Trickey at Central High School, where she was a player in the desegregation of that school. Then we head to the Clinton Library.

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Lynn Wheeler, president of Wheeler Communication Group, LLC, is a former Charlotte mayor pro tempore. Read her introductory piece from last year's trip.

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