CCO staff members featured in PBS documentary about Civil Rights Bus Tour
For eight days in June, a group of Western Pennsylvanians journeyed to the sites of America’s Civil Rights struggle. The “Return to the Roots of Civil Rights Bus Tour” covered nearly 2,600 miles, traveling from Beaver Falls to the Deep South. Among the travelers were several CCO staff members, who are featured in interviews throughout the 30-minute program.
The documentary does a fine job of highlighting how the experience of traveling to key sites of the Civil Rights Movement and hearing from many of those who were instrumental in the movement helps to bring history alive. For CCO staff, it also provides a vibrant framework within which to discuss with college students issues of race and reconciliation.
The 2006 bus tour featured in this documentary was co-sponsored by Geneva College and PNC Bank and was open to participants from across western Pennsylvania. The first Civil Rights Pilgrimage of this kind took place in May of 2001, initiated as a professional development option for the 14 CCO staff who participated. The tour in 2001, as in 2006, was led by Geneva College’s Todd Allen and the Rev. Robert Graetz, himself a pioneer of the American modern Civil Rights Movement and a former colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr.
CCO staff and alumni whose journal entries are featured in the documentary include Andy Campbell, Alaina Cronkright, Andrew Hart, Jennifer Merrill and Amy Serridge. The documentary aired on WQED TV 13 , the public television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 18, 7:30pm, 10:30pm and midnight and October 19, 12:30pm.
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