Traveling with Twain

On the drive to Keokuk, Iowa, where a young Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) worked as a printer in the mid-1850s, we stop in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, for lunch. We have Twain as an appetizer. A building … Read more >>

We have stopped at what remains of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, Money, Mississippi, site of an incident that led to a brutal murder that helped kick-start the civil rights revolution. On August 14, 1955, Emmett … Read more >>

I remember Ernest Withers of Memphis as a distinguished civil rights photographer, whose message to journalism students at Emory and Northwestern Universities, when I invited him to speak, was more spiritual than shutter-speed, f-stop practical. Shortly … Read more >>

In traveling the country, I’m often impressed by those who do not travel—people who stay put and devote their lives to transforming institutions. During my visit to Holly Springs, Mississippi, I visit David Beckley, in his … Read more >>

We spend another day driving south, today through three Mississippi river towns famous in part for their connection to the life of Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) as a steamboat pilot—what he called “the only unfettered and … Read more >>