Our eleventh-grade class recently spent an entire week in Alabama as a conclusion to their Civil Rights main lesson block with Mrs. Tonya Rice. Their educational itinerary included important sites such as: Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Rosa Parks Museum, Maya Lin Civil Rights Memorial, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, a walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and more.
Here is a written reflection on the trip from current 11th grader Annabelle Gauthier:
On Monday, April 7, we embarked on our Civil Rights Trip to Alabama. We travelled around a few cities: Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, and Tuskegee, studying the Civil Rights Movement. During our time there, we visited many museums, including the Rosa Parks Museum and the Legacy Museum. We also visited institutes, universities, monuments, and parks. Through these experiences, we delved deeper into subjects and events we had learned about in class and about significant historical figures. We talked to people who lived through and even participated in protests and marches, as well as others whose parents were strong activists in the movement. We stood on land where people were killed, walked across a bridge where approximately 600 people marched for voting rights, set foot in a baseball field where black people used to have their own league, and saw art that was inspired by all the fighting and courage that took place to get to where we are today.
During our down time we played card games and shared many great laughs with our chaperones. One evening, we watched the movie Selma, which told the story of Bloody Sunday and other occurrences related to civil rights in Selma, Alabama. It was a very moving film that broadened our understanding of the march and connected us to the people who were involved in it in a new way.
It was very emotionally hard to see the number of people that were lost during the period of slavery and throughout the Civil Rights Movement, seeing it in person made it all the more real and impactful. We learned of things that are very heavy to think about, that give you a pit in your stomach that you cannot get rid of, yet it is what made the experience so memorable. The Civil Rights Trip is one that we will never forget, one that will stay vividly in our memory for years to come.
