On March 7, 1965, 600 people headed east out of Selma, Ala., to demand equal voting rights for African Americans. They didn't get far—only six blocks—to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There, state and local law enforcement attacked the marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. John Lewis, then a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (now a congressman from Georgia), was among them and suffered a cracked skull. The marchers were driven back into Selma. From then on, the incident was called “Bloody Sunday.”

Two days later, Martin Luther King Jr. led a symbolic march to the Pettus bridge. Then, on March 21, about 3,200 people set out from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital, to demand voting rights. By the time they reached Montgomery on March 25, there were 25,000 of them. Less than five months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I joined a road trip to commemorate the 45th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," civil rights martyrs, and the series of Selma-to-Montgomery Marches. Called the Evelyn Gibson Lowery Civil Rights Heritage Tour, it was hosted by the wife of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) chairman emeritus, Rev. Joseph Lowery. Winnie Mandela, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Lewis and actor Terrence Howard were among those who joined the commemoration.

This is a diary of my journey to Selma.

Saturday, March 6, 2010, 7:20 a.m.

It is a cool, quiet March morning, and the sun is rising over Auburn Avenue in Atlanta. But Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe says the sky was dark the other times she met the buses for the annual civil rights tour sponsored by SCLC/W.O.M.E.N. (W.O.M.E.N. stands for Women's Organizational Movement for Equality Now.) We're panicking inside a taxi outside the group's headquarters in a neighborhood that includes the King Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church. We learn the buses left almost an hour ago.

Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe, left, Sally Liuzzo-Prado (speaking) and Evelyn Lowery at Viola Liuzzo monument in Lowndes County, Ala. (Melanie Eversley)

I am with Liuzzo Lilleboe and her sister, Sally Liuzzo-Prado, the daughters of Viola Liuzzo, a white woman murdered in 1965 by the Ku Klux Klan outside of Selma, Ala., because of her involvement in civil rights activities. We're frazzled, but I think to myself that when obstacles fall in your way, you must be headed in the right direction.

A couple taking the tour in their own truck drive us to Birmingham and unite us with the group.