Franklin County leaders planning Civil Rights tour

Details: The tour is slated for mid-March and will include 19 county leaders and workers.

• Attendees will take "a historical pilgrimage through Mississippi and Tennessee, to discover how Soul music and the Civil Rights movements are inextricably linked," a resolution states.
• The trip will "position us to be the leaders we aspire to be, because so much of our success in life comes from standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, those who fought in the battlegrounds where the struggle for freedom, justice and creative expression began."

The big picture: These tours are part of a yearslong effort by the commissioners to promote racial equity, spokesperson Tyler Lowry tells Axios.

• Lowry noted the creation of the Racial Equity Council and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which work to set diversity standards in county offices.
• Franklin County also hosted an inaugural "Discover, Engage, Ignite" conference in November highlighting these initiatives.

Flashback: Commissioner John O'Grady took a similar tour of Alabama via the nonprofit last year and saw the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and a statue of Rosa Parks near where she boarded a bus and refused to give up her seat.