Southern Road [30min]

Just prior to Hurricane Katrina striking the US coast, writer and poet Anthony Walton set off on a car journey from Montgomery in Alabama, the birthplace of the civil rights movement, to Richmond in Virginia, the confederate capital during the Civil War. Walton's aim was to explore and experience the areas that go to make up what is commonly called The South, and the role that history plays in defining the region today. His journey takes him to the historic Tuskegee University in Alabama, founded by the pioneering African-American educationalist Booker T Washington; to a mega-church in suburban Atlanta; through the old South of Charleston; South Carolina; and the liberal South of Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina. Walton's odyssey ends in Richmond on Monument Avenue -- wandering along a parade of statues in memory of the confederate past that strangely looks forward.