“It was a great experience for Nicholas and me,” says theologian Harvey Cox about a trip he and his teenage son took this summer. The two traveled to several states in the South where the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s took place. At some of these sites, Harvey Cox had taken personal part in events that were important in the history of this movement.

In Williamstown, North Carolina, for example, they visited the jail where the father had been imprisoned for two days before being transferred to another jail for a week. “I walked around and peered in the windows,” he says of his stop at the now-abandoned building.

To the father, a veteran theology professor at Harvard Divinity School and an ordained Baptist minister, the return meant a chance to renew the spirit that animated him and his fellow pioneers, four decades ago. He also wanted to show his son where events crucial to 20th century American history took place.

For the son, it was an opportunity to share in his father’s personal history and to learn more about that history for himself. As they moved from place to place, the boy used a camcorder to keep a record of their trip.

Of all the places visited, Professor Cox felt most moved by Selma, Alabama. There they stayed near the Alabama River at a hotel, formerly segregated but now something of a civil rights memorial. They also walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where in 1965 marchers had been brutally attacked by state troopers and the merciless forces of the local sheriff.

Birmingham was another place where they stopped, this also the site of bloody attacks on peaceful demonstrators.  In May of 1963, hundreds of schoolchildren and teenagers marched with adult demonstrators to a local park in order to protest segregation. The notorious sheriff Bull Connor turned police dogs and fire hoses on the marchers and arrested thousands of demonstrators. In the same area during this period four young girls were burned to death in a church.

In Atlanta, father and son visited the Martin Luther King Memorial and found it rich in memorabilia of Dr. King’s life and the historical records of the civil rights movement.

The travelers also visited Mississippi delta where Harvey Cox had worked in 1968,  and where he was delighted to be reunited with some of his old associates.

He was also happy to note that some conditions had changed for the better. Automobile trouble led to one example of striking change.

When he stopped on the side of the road because his rental car had boiled over, he saw a Mississippi State highway patrol car come up behind his. With apprehension, he remembered that police in that state had often treated outsiders brutally. Imagine his surprise and relief when out of the police car emerged two officers, black women, who greeted him with: “Hi! How are you doing? Is there anything we can do to help?”

On the other hand, much remains as it was. Many of the changes remain on the surface, reports Professor Cox, and too many people of color still find themselves with opportunities severely limited by prejudicial racial attitudes.

When I asked Harvey Cox whether he considered the trip a pilgrimage, he answered without hesitation: “That’s exactly what it was.” He compares his journey to the great medieval routes to  Compostella , on the western edge of Europe where, through the centuries, millions of pilgrims have traveled.

The Coxes approached the sites in a reverential frame of mind, though they had the wisdom to take occasional breaks. For instance, they went to a Red Sox game in Atlanta, where they saw the Sox lose to the Braves. It made sense to find some relief from oppressively hot weather and the fatigue of covering long distances. Medieval pilgrims did much the same, although without the benefits of baseball and air conditioning.

Radio and television journalist, Christopher Lydon, says of Harvey Cox’s original experience in the civil rights struggles: “He was there when it took guts to do it.” Professor Cox himself points away from himself to the larger meaning of the events that he has recently relived: “The Freedom Movement remains for me one of the most significant chapters in American history.”

Richard Griffin