“We are from California and we are traveling through the South with our kids for two weeks to learn about music, art, culture, history and Civil Rights. We went to Atlanta, Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans, Breaux Bridge, Natchez, Vicksburg and are going to Memphis.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“People seem to have segregated themselves through social and geography. We live in an insular environment in California and wanted to show our kids a different part of our world. This is a good place to start. We have been planning this trip for several years and woke up after election day and Mike asked if we should still go and I said it is probably more important than ever to go and learn. After seeing the news, we were worried that there might be more confrontational interactions, but everyone has been very gracious and warm, regardless of where they fall on the socioeconomic scale. One of my takeaways is you can research all you want online and in books and movies but you can only pick up the nuances when you go there. Humans are curious about each other, but the way the media filters it and it bubbles up through social media, you only get the tension points.”

“We used to be journalists. I worked at Newsweek for an editor, she worked for newspapers on the East Coast and we were foreign correspondents in London. People react to the media and what they see on CNN, but we have lost local coverage. People are doing such good work in every community and they don’t attention. There should be more coverage of what is going on in places like this.”