WELCOME
FROM THE EDITOR
Goodness me – it’s hard to believe that this is our 100th issue! Back in early 1994, when a few of us launched Essentially America on a wing and a prayer, we never wondered if it would still be around nearly two-and-ahalf decades later. And yet here we are – still published in the UK but now also in several other countries around the world.
We stated in that first issue that “travel to North America should not just be about scenery, sunshine, sand and sea but also about experiences”. And we still believe that. Thus, in this issue my other writers and I have focused on our personal experiences when visiting three of our favourite areas – New England, two of the ‘Great American West’ states and the South – but also on a totally different aspect of the latter region.
The South is often praised – and rightly so – for its great beauty and charm; its lovely plantations and gardens; its soft, sandy beaches and delightful cities; and its delicious food and toe-tapping, soul-stirring music – but this time we are focusing on another equally important, but more thought-provoking aspect of the region’s heritage. That’s the heroic and often brutal struggle for equal rights of its African-Americans citizens, as told and illustrated by the more than 100 sites, some outside the South, along the new US Civil Rights Trail.
So, read on ... and rejoin us for our 25th year of publishing commemorations next year.
PS: I finally ticked off two items on my travel bucket list by visiting a few months ago the only two US states I had never visited before – North Dakota (covered in this issue) and Nebraska (yet to come).