A few weeks ago I introduced a column discussing the official U.S. poverty rate by referencing the 2011 poverty bus tour that was organized by Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West. In August of that year, Smiley and West visited a total of 18 cities in 11 states.
Designed to reveal the many faces of poverty that persist across racial, cultural and geographic lines, the tour commenced on an Ojibwe reservation in northwest Wisconsin before culminating at a town hall meeting in Memphis and a visit to the Lorraine Motel, site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In between, the pair visited urban centers such as Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta along with smaller cities like Charleston, West Virginia and the rural town of Caledonia, Mississippi. The poverty tour was later chronicled during a five-part PBS television mini-series where several key figures central to the current debate on poverty were interviewed. These included poverty expert Jeffrey Sachs, evangelist and social activist Jim Wallis, and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Governor of Kansas Kathleen Sebelius.