When Road Scholar launched its Civil Rights Movement program in Alabama and Georgia in 2017, the nonprofit organization promoting educational travel had no idea how popular it would become. “We constantly see requests for additional dates to be added because so many people are wanting to learn about that area of history,” said Lindsey Temple, Road Scholar’s program operations director.
The travel company, which caters to an older demographic (you must be at least 40 to register, but the majority of participants are Baby Boomers), is responding to that interest by introducing two new itineraries designed to explore how the Civil Rights Movement unfolded in New Orleans, Jackson, Nashville, and Memphis.
The six-night, seven-day all-inclusive trips will debut in May 2027.
Road Scholar already offers 10 New Orleans itineraries, but enthusiasm for exploring the region is significant enough to merit one more: Rhythm of Resistance: Civil Rights & Jazz in New Orleans aims to show travelers a different, deeper side of the city.
Related: 4 Days in New Orleans: Zip Lines Over Alligators, Raised Mausoleums, and Cajun Sausage Croissants
One of the stops on the seven-day tour is the Storyville Museum, a 7,000-square-foot interactive museum in the city’s French Quarter that explores the city’s infamous history of debauchery and the neighborhood’s outsize influence on American culture.
Travelers on Road Scholar’s Civil Rights Movement in Jackson, Memphis & Nashville tour will stop at Memphis’s National Civil Rights Museum.
Photo by EQRoy/Shutterstock
Museum founder Claus Sadlier explained the significance of his museum in relation to jazz and the city’s Black cultural heritage: “You can’t actually understand New Orleans—and its relationship to and influence on American culture, without [Storyville],” he said by email. He explained that the district helped incubate jazz by providing musicians with a place to perform and innovate and that its history offers insight into the city’s complex racial history.
Plus, it was the location of “one of the earliest landmark civil rights victories in America . . . and almost nobody knows it,” Sadlier said, referring to what he described as a largely forgotten 1917 moment when prominent Black and mixed-race Storyville madams successfully challenged a city ordinance that would have forced them from the district.
Road Scholar’s New Orleans civil rights trip also includes guided stops at the Whitney Plantation, the New Orleans African American Museum, and multiple opportunities to listen to jazz, as well as a lecture from civil rights pioneer Dr. Leona Tate and a behind-the-scenes visit to Preservation Hall.
Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Movement in Jackson, Memphis & Nashville itinerary takes travelers to three different cities, where stops include Memphis’s National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel (the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination), Nashville’s National Museum of African American Music, and the courthouse where Emmett Till’s murder trial was held.
Related: The Heart of Buffalo’s Black History Beats in This Cultural Corridor
Liz Bittner, managing director of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance, isn’t surprised to hear about these robust civil rights itineraries. Visiting civil right sites and destinations continues to be a priority for travelers who want “authentic, meaningful and transformative” experiences, Bittner told Afar.
It’s not about checking off boxes on a list, she added. Rather, the impetus is about a desire to “understand the people and stories that shaped a place,” she said, emphasizing that this way of travel is no longer considered niche as interested parties span generations, backgrounds, and cultures.
