Award-winning journalist John Seigenthaler has a long list of credits that make him a viable man to give a speech. Among those credits, in 1961, at a time when he briefly left journalism to work for then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, he was sent to be the federal liaison to Alabama governor John Patterson to negotiate on behalf of the Freedom Riders. Working to test the desegregation orders by federal courts, the Freedom Riders arrived in Montgomery, one of their many stops, only days after a severely violent episode in Birmingham. The crowd that met them in Montgomery was again hostile and violent, and Seigenthaler himself was badly beaten and knocked unconscious, trying to defend them against a mob estimated at 750.

On March 29, 2005, John Seigenthaler was brought to the Rosa Parks Museum by Dr. Georgette Norman and by Ms. Wanda Lloyd, executive editor of the Montgomery Advertiser. He spoke to high school students from Saint James, Montgomery Academy, and BTW in the small auditorium, then fielded questions afterward.