As part of a whirlwind Southern tour, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders whizzed around several historic spots in the River Region on Monday.

The Vermont senator's morning was the culmination of his multistate tour, where he visited various historic locations to learn and talk about income inequality, justice and voting rights and other mainstays of his social democratic platform.

His first visit brought him to the doublewide home of Pamela Rush, a woman living in Tyler, Alabama in rural Lowndes County. She has straight-pipe plumbing, where the sewage from her home that drains directly onto the ground outside — an issue that the Montgomery Advertiser wrote extensively about in a series last summer.

Sanders said her lack of resources is endemic to America's poorest.

"The truth is, that in America today, we have many, many millions of people who are spending 40-50-60% of their limited incomes on housing," he said. "These types of conditions ... should not be existing in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world."

As he talked about the lack of sewage infrastructure and housing conditions in Lowndes County, Sanders said fixes for those issues should also be included in any type of presidential infrastructure plan.

"I do want to stress that it's not just roads and bridges. It is water systems to the wastewater plants. It is affordable housing," he said.

For most of the rest of the morning, Sanders toured other historical sites, such as the Lowndes Interpretive Center in Haynesville and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom House in White Hall.

While those visits were brief, Sanders used them as an opportunity to learn about the local fights for voting rights and to highlight the different aspects of his platform —like justice and equal access to the political power structures in the country — that intersect with those histories.

The last visit of the morning before his rally at Mount Zion A.M.E. Zion Church in Montgomery was at the Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

Unlike the other stops, Sanders was largely silent. He listened to EJI's Kiara Boone talk about their work, once asking her to repeat herself to the press to emphasize the scope of lynchings in America — EJI has recorded and confirmed about 4,400.

"It is a memorial to the horrors of American history, which we have got to understand. We cannot go forward if we sweep history under the rug," he said at his Mt. Zion rally.

At the historic church, Sanders hit on some of the issues that have made him a darling with the progressive wing of Democrats, including Medicare for All, making public colleges free to attend, corporate greed and a higher minimum wage.

"If you want a real transformational change that touches the overwhelming majority of the working, poor and middle class of this country then Senator Bernie Sanders is your champion," said former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner at the event.

The diverse crowd was fired up for Sanders, illustrating the enthusiastic support that he has from his fans. His tour through the South and areas in the Black Belt likely are part of a plan to bolster support among black Americans, after the perception during the 2016 primary that African Americans didn't identify with his campaign.

Because of that, the choice of Mt. Zion as the location for his rally seemed fitting. Though the current congregation meets newer building, the community has a history of black advocacy. That includes housing activists on the Selma-to-Montgomery march and serving as the home base from the Montgomery Improvement Association as members chose Martin Luther King Jr. as their leader.

"That reminds us that the bedrock of American democracy is the right to vote," Sanders said, referencing sites he visited earlier in the day, where black Alabamian sharecroppers were forced from their land and into tent cities as they fought for equal access to the polls.

"What an outrage it is today. I'm not talking about 60 years ago, I'm talking about today, you have Republican governors all over this country trying to suppress the vote," he said.

Sanders also said that he would like to increase funding for historically black colleges and universities, create better paying opportunities for teachers and start loan forgiveness for doctors that work in rural areas with healthcare staffing shortages.

In doing so, he also addressed a common criticism of his plans.

"I got bad news for Mr. Bezos and the other profitable corporations. They are going to start paying their fair share," Sanders said, referencing Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of Amazon.

Sanders also said that the war on drugs in America needs to end, because it disproportionately affects minorities and has caused our prisons to be overrun with people that don't deserve to be there.

"I think it is time to transform our country and create the kind of nation we know we can become. A nation where all people have healthcare, our kids have the best education in the world. Where we end racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry. Where we lead the world in combating climate change. Or, instead of spending so much money on the military, we start investing it in the needs of our children and our senior citizens," he said.