Students Experience History in Alabama

Written by: Mckayla Burriss (mab012@marietta.edu)

Learning about history in a classroom can lead students to become disconnected from the experience of the past, but having students physically be where history was made and hear from survivors in person can make it resonate more and create a lasting impression.

Over fall break, some students traveled to Montgomery, Alabama. They walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge were marchers walked during Bloody Sunday, toured Dexter Avenue Baptist Church were Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as a pastor, and did even more to achieve a better understanding of the history of slavery and the civil rights movement. 

On Saturday, October 3rd, the group kicked off the trip with a tour of the Dexter Parsonage Museum. This is a tour of the house where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived with his family. This is also where Dr. King’s home was bombed and serves as an important monument for the Civil Rights Movement. Later, the group toured Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as pastor. The last stop of the day was the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial, where students were educated on people who died fighting for civil rights, how the civil rights movement from the 1950s and 1960s connects to social activism today, and how to reflect on being committed to equality and justice as an ordinary person. 

Sunday, October 4th, they visited the Legacy Museum, which displays history from enslavement to mass incarceration. It is extremely immersive, demonstrating 400 years of African American history. The museum begins with slavery and the Transatlantic slave trade, Jim Crow segregation, racial terror and lynchings, mass incarceration, and ends with a selection of art. Students later visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This museum is to commemorate the victims of lynchings in the United States. According to Tyler Dafoe, who wrote about the memorial in Artnet, there are eight hundred steel blocks, each hanging from the ceiling to represent the counties in the United States where lynching occurred (2018). These blocks have the names of over 4,000 victims of documented lynchings on them. 

On the last day of the trip, Monday, October 5th, the group participated in the Selma Foot Soldiers tour guided by Ms. Barbara Barge, who witnessed the Selma civil rights era as a child. This tour took the students around civil rights era historical locations such as Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, Dallas County Courthouse, and the new Live Oak Cemetery. Students also got to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge were civil rights marchers faced beatings known as Bloody Sunday. 

The group completed the Alabama Legacy Museum Boat Tour and ended the experience at the Legacy Museum sculpture park. This site uses a blend of contemporary art and ruthless history to educate on the history of slavery. The park is home to the National Monument to Freedom. According to CBS journalist Mark Whitaker, who wrote about the National Monument to Freedom, this is a 43-foot-tall monument, and it displays over 122,000 surnames of former slaves recorded by the 1870 census (2024).  

The trip visited several significant landmarks for slavery and the civil rights movement and cultivated a better understanding for students of the sacrifices and sufferings of those who were involved. Absorbing and comprehending the history of this nation will always be important, as mistakes need to be learned from in order to not be repeated. This grim history of the United States is shocking and disheartening. Ultimately the trip served as a reminder to keep advocating for justice and equality in today’s society. If we educate ourselves and engage with history, we can recognize the legacy of the civil rights movement and continue to shape a more enlightened future for generations to come. 

Edited by: Rebecca Straits (rjs006@marietta.edu)