On the same day that the first African American took the oath for the nation’s highest office, Elon Leadership Fellows embarked to the Deep South for tour that connected history to the present. Twenty-three students traveled to Alabama and Georgia during Winter Term as part of a course on civil rights and nonviolence.
The trip for “Disarming Injustice: Civil Rights and Nonviolence,” taught by associate professor Frances Ward-Johnson in the School of Communications, included visits to iconic locations from the 1960s and 1970s. Mallory Anderson, director of the Center for Leadership, co-led the trip.
“It was really interesting to take this Civil Rights Movement class in the midst of another historical moment in United States history,” said Stacey Markham, a sophomore Leadership Fellow. “It was great to see how far we have come as a country, from beating black voting demonstrators to electing a biracial president. I think that it just shows how much progress as a country that we have made.”
One highlight was participating in a question-and-answer session with former Birmingham leader Richard Arrington Jr., the city’s first African American mayor. Arrington made an appearance at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute as students wrapped up a visit to the institute on their first day in Alabama.
Arrington won 51 percent of the vote against Frank Parson, a white business leader, and took the oath of office on Nov. 13, 1979. He was mayor of Birmingham for 20 years. Arrington told students that during a visit to Denmark with his wife, he took note of what one man told him: “If Birmingham, Alabama, can change and elect a black for mayor, then there’s hope for the world.”
In Birmingham, the group also visited the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, site of the bombing that killed four girls in 1963; Kelly Ingram Park, where Bull Connor and his officers used fire hoses and dogs against children; and Bethel Baptist Church, where major civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth was pastor.
The next stop was Selma, Ala., where the group visited Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church and marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, infamous for the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” event. Other stops included the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute, the Slavery & Civil War Museum, the Lowndes County Interpretive Center and the memorial site of Viola Liuzzo, who is said to be the first white woman to die in the Civil Rights Movement.
Montgomery was the third and final stop in Alabama. The group visited the Alabama State Capitol, where the 5-day, 54-mile voting rights march from Selma concluded. They also toured the Dexter Parsonage, home of Martin Luther King Jr. and his family from 1954 to 1960. It is also the site where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed. The visit to Montgomery ended with visits to the Rosa Parks Museum and the Civil Rights Memorial Center.
The final leg of the trip was spent in Atlanta, Ga., at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. The students were able to see many of King’s possessions, visit the church that he and his father pastored, and view his and Coretta Scott King’s gravesite.
“It was really reinforcing to actually see and experience all of the places that we had spent two weeks reading and learning about,” Markham said.
For sophomore Jesse Lee, it was part of the package deal that made the Winter Term class so memorable.
“The cumulative effect of the class discussions, readings, trip to Alabama, and events such as President Obama’s inauguration and MLK day created an atmosphere that allowed me to become thoroughly immersed in the material,” Lee said. “I feel fortunate to have participated in something so impactful and can confidently say I have had only a select few equally memorable experiences.”
For final class assignments, students produced projects about their experiences to showcase to audiences inside and outside the Elon community, including two Civil Rights board games and an informative Civil Rights history book aimed at middle school and high school students.
A student group blog can be read by clicking the link to the right of this page.
– Written by Ashley Barnas ’10