A Civil Rights Student Journey – 4-Nights

Today you’ll start your adventure and depart to Atlanta, your first stop on your Civil Rights history trip. Upon arrival in Atlanta, you’ll meet your Tour Manager.

After breakfast, you’ll check out of your hotel room. You’ll board your bus and depart the hotel for the day.

You’ll stop at the Selma Interpretive Center which serves as the Welcome Center to the trail located at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The Interpretive Center offers an interpretive exhibit and bookstore. You’ll see a brief film before heading the bridge.

After lunch, you’ll take a guided tour of Selma which played a significant role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, particularly the Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, which became a pivotal event in the struggle for African American voting rights.

You’ll walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks–and three events–that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement. On “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a “symbolic” march to the bridge.

You’ll visit the Viola Liuzzo Memorial. On March 25, 1965, Viola Liuzzo was driving marchers home when she was shot and killed by KKK members. Her car crashed at the site of the present marker. In 1991, she was honored by the Women of the southern Christian Leadership Conference with the marker on the highway. The Marker reads: “In memory of our sister Viola Liuzzo who gave her life in the struggle for the right to vote… March 25, 1965. Presented by SCLC/Women, Evelyn Lowery National Convener – 1991. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Joseph Lowery, President.”

You’ll visit the Maya Lin Civil Rights Memorial. Dedicated in 1989, the memorial was designed by Maya Lin, who found inspiration in the paraphrase from Amos 5:24 that King used in his “I Have a Dream” speech: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” On the Memorial’s circular, black granite table, water emerges from the center and flows evenly across a timeline, reminiscent of a sundial, that chronicles the major events of the movement and records the names of 40 men, women and children who were killed during the struggle. Behind the table, a thin sheet of water flows down a 40-foot-long curved, black granite wall on which the words “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” are inscribed.

After dinner, you’ll arrive at your hotel and check in.

After breakfast, you’ll board your bus and depart the hotel for the day.

You will visit the Rosa Parks Museum and Children’s Wing in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Mrs Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery City Bus to a white man sparking the 381 day Montgomery Bus Boycott that fueled the Civil Rights Movement. Troy University has dedicated the Museum and Children’s Wing to Rosa Parks, the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”. In the Rosa Parks Museum and Children’s Wing, you’ll go back in time on the Cleveland Avenue Time Machine to discover all of the people, like Rosa Parks, who made a difference in the world we live in today.

After lunch, you’ll visit the Legacy Museum and National Memorial. The Legacy Museum is located on the site of a former warehouse where black people were enslaved in Montgomery, Alabama, the museum uses interactive media, sculpture, videography and exhibits to immerse you in the sights and sounds of the domestic slave trade, racial terrorism, the Jim Crow South, and the world’s largest prison system. You’ll then walk to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice where more than 4400 African American men, women, and children were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950. Millions more fled the South as refugees from racial terrorism, profoundly impacting the entire nation. Until now, there has been no national memorial acknowledging the victims of racial terror lynchings. On a six-acre site atop a rise overlooking Montgomery, the national lynching memorial is a sacred space for truth-telling and reflection about racial terror in America and its legacy.

You’ll visit the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. Overlooking the Alabama River, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park honors the lives and memories of the 10 million Black people who were enslaved in America and celebrates their courage and resilience. At this 17-acre site along the very river where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked, breathtaking art and original artifacts invite an immersive, interactive journey and provide a unique view into the lives of enslaved people.

After dinner, you will return to your hotel on the bus.

After breakfast, you’ll check out of your hotel room. You’ll board your bus and depart the hotel for the day.

In the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, a National Historic Landmark, you’ll see the modest pulpit where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. first preached his message of hope and brotherhood. This church was also a center point of the Montgomery bus boycott. A large mural in the church depicts King’s civil rights crusade from Montgomery to Memphis.

You’ll take a guided tour of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Parsonage Museum where you’ll experience the actual residence where Dr. King and his young family lived between 1954 and 1960; an Interpretive Center, and the King-Johns Garden for Reflection.

After lunch, you’ll head to the airport for your return trip home.