Movements of the American South: New Orleans to Nashville

Thirteen nights from New Orleans to Nashville, self-drive with the flights included, following the music and the civil rights history of the Deep South.

New Orleans takes the first three nights in the French Quarter, with jazz, blues and zydeco in the venues, a guided Creole food tour and the Jazz Museum. Mobile follows for two, which claims the first Mardi Gras in the United States, with the city museum, Colonial Fort Conde and the Africatown Heritage House, which tells the story of the last known slave ship to reach the country.

Montgomery comes next with the Civil Rights Memorial Center, the Rosa Parks Museum and the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King was pastor during the bus boycott. Birmingham follows for two nights, with the Civil Rights Institute, Kelly Ingram Park and the 16th Street Baptist Church, bombed in 1963. Memphis takes three, with Beale Street, Graceland, the Rock and Soul Museum and the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel, with Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry at the end.

Flights, fully insured car hire, all the accommodation and round-the-clock support while travelling are included, and the price is quoted per person. Fifteen days with multi-night stops in the cities is the right pace for a route where most of the stops are museums and venues rather than views. The civil rights sites along it are handled seriously by the people who run them and are worth the time the schedule gives them. Spring and autumn are the better seasons.