My Mind Stayed on Freedom
A travel diary of Marquette’s 2022 civil rights pilgrimage
Why an immersion program?
Many renown figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement credited immersive experiences as having a great impact on their participation and contributions.
These immersive experiences took many forms, including: visiting Gandhi’s ashram in India (Howard Thurman, Benjamin Mays, and James Lawson), participating in organizing workshops at the Highlander Folk School (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., E.D. Nixon, and others) and attending nonviolent direct action workshops with James Lawson (Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Bernard Lafayette, and others).
It is in this spirit that we developed a Civil Rights Pilgrimage for Marquette students to experience the places and learn about the people who comprised the U.S. Southern Civil Rights Movement. It is in this spirit that we provided this experience for students to examine their own faith, vocation, and values. It is in this spirit that students would seek inspiration to dedicate their studies, their work, and their being to the ongoing quest for justice, dignity, and human rights.
So we loaded up on a coach bus and set out on our pilgrimage.
Day 1: Milwaukee
Our journey started at home, in Milwaukee. We gathered at the America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
America’s Black Holocaust Museum
At the ABHM, we learned about the history of the museum, founded by Dr. James Cameron in 1988, and the efforts that went into reopening it this year after being closed for more than a decade.
The exhibits covered important time periods such as African peoples before captivity, the middle passage, enslavement, reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary struggles for justice. The ABHM was a valuable starting point to contextualize how the Civil Rights Movement fits into the larger timeline of Black history and the struggle for Black liberation.
I love how ABHM displayed information on civil rights in Milwaukee. It really pinpointed Wisconsin’s wins on racial justice and how we are still moving through our journey as a community.
Day 2: St. Louis
We made a brief detour to St. Louis, consisting of a few quick stops, before continuing on to Memphis.
Old Courthouse & Gateway Arch
We visited the Old Courthouse, which has a statue of Dred and Harriet Scott, commemorating the historic trials that took place here. The Gateway Arch stands across the street. We also learned the story of St. Louis CORE/ACTION, including how two activists — Percy Green and Richard Daly — scaled the then partially completed arch in a protest for equal economic opportunities.
The Griot Museum of Black History & George B. Vashon Museum
We then visited two museums. The Griot Museum of Black History included a replica of a slave ship, a reconstructed slave cabin, and many lifelike wax figures of prominent individuals. Calvin Riley, Jr., founder and director of the George B. Vashon Museum, provided a guided tour of the many rare artifacts in his collection that help tell on a micro-level the stories of Black achievement, oppression, and resistance throughout history.
Day 3: Memphis
Our time in Memphis allowed us to dive deep into Civil Rights Movement history and examine the development of music and culture in the city known as the Home of the Blues and the Birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel
The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel pulled us into key moments and periods of the Civil Rights Movement with interactive exhibits documenting campaigns and events that propelled the movement forward.
These exhibits provided us a timeline of the Civil Rights Movement that showed key progressions and transitions, including: school integration, bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, voting rights, Black Power, and the Memphis Sanitation Strike.
One of the most powerful experiences of the entire trip was the step-by-step journey through King’s last hours in which we saw the room he was staying in at the Lorraine Motel and the balcony he was shot on.
This may have been the highlight of the trip. It was a very visual experience that covered various stages of the Civil Rights Movement. It was powerful and haunting to stand in the space where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed.
I AM A MAN PLAZA and Beale Street Walking Tour
Wet met Joe Calhoun, operations manager at the Withers Collection Museum and Gallery, for a walking tour of Memphis civil rights sites and Beale Street. He taught us about the Memphis Sanitation Strike and significance of Historic Clayborn Temple while we were at I AM A MAN Plaza.
Withers Collection Museum & Gallery
The walking tour concluded at the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery on Beale Street. We learned about Dr. Ernest C. Withers, who became the personal photographer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., before browsing some of the photographs he took that documented Black life and culture during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement.
Ernest Withers’ photographs were very powerful and pulled me into what life was like during the Civil Rights Movement.
Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum
We finished the day with a visit to the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum where we learned about the significance of and innovations in music from spirituals to the blues to R&B to rock and roll to soul music. The exhibits, artifacts, and songs revealed the ways music captures the story of struggle and resistance, as well as the ways music propels progress and change.
Music is an integral part of life. This was a unique way to experience how quests for freedom shaped music and how music shaped the movement.
Day 4: Mississippi
We continued our journey south with a few stops in Mississippi.
Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC)
We arrived in the small town of Glendora to visit the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center. We were greeted by Hon. Johnny B. Thomas, the mayor of Glendora and founder of ETHIC. The museum exhibits guided us through Emmett Till’s story and helped us understand how his murder and Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to hold an open casket funeral service for him sparked the Civil Rights Movement.
ETHIC highlighted Emmett Till’s story in a way that honored his legacy with empowerment. It was extremely emotional being at locations where such horrific violence occurred.
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
We were in for a surprise when we arrived at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson in the afternoon. Veteran of the Freedom Rides, Hezekiah Watkins, was there to welcome us and share the moving personal testimony of his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
We then browsed the exhibits, which provided a deeper dive into the many individuals, organizations, events, and movements that made up the Mississippi freedom struggle.
Mr. Watkins’ story about his arrest, experience as a freedom rider, and time as a political prisoner at Parchman Farm was incredibly moving. This was a once in a lifetime experience.
Day 5: Selma, Lowndes, and Montgomery
We then crossed into Alabama and embarked on a day dedicated to voting rights.
Selma Walking Tour
We started our morning walking tour at Brown Chapel AME Church, the starting point for the Selma to Montgomery marches. We then walked the few blocks to and crossed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the marchers were turned around multiple times, including on Bloody Sunday. We concluded the walking tour at the Civil Rights Memorial Park.
This was a great way to be present and picture ourselves as the activists who did this in the 60’s. Walking across the Edmund Pettis Bridge and standing at the site of Bloody Sunday brought on a strong wave of emotions.
National Voting Rights Museum and Institute
We then visited the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, located at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. When civil rights activists converged in Selma in 1965, their direct action campaign — including the Selma to Montgomery March — led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Here we learned about Foot Soldiers, the ordinary people who put their feet to the pavement in the struggle for voting rights and human rights.
NVRM was amazing. I liked the specific focus on voting rights and the casts of the Foot Soldier’s footprints.
Lowndes Interpretive Center
The route of the Selma to Montgomery March passed through Lowndes County. After passage of the Voting Rights Act, activists and local organizers formed Tent City — now site of the Lowndes Interpretive Center — in response to violence directed at Black people who exercised their right to vote or were engaged in voter registration efforts.
Montgomery Interpretive Center
We were one of the first groups ever to visit the newly opened Montgomery Interpretive Center on the campus of Alabama State University. This capped off our tour of Selma to Montgomery March sites and highlighted the culmination of the march at the State Capitol.
The drive from Selma to Montgomery was interesting because it showed the great distance so many people marched. And I learned so much at the interpretive centers about the violence the marchers faced.
Freedom Rides Museum
We made a final stop at the Freedom Rides Museum located at the site of the old Greyhound bus station in downtown Montgomery. This museum took us back in time to the 1961 freedom rides. The exhibits detailed key moments during this action to integrate interstate transportation, including when their bus was firebombed by white supremacists in Anniston, AL; when college student Diane Nash called for the rides to resume despite bomb threats; and when freedom riders were arrested en masse and sent to prison at Parchman Farm in Mississippi.
Day 6: Montgomery
Our first full day in Montgomery included visits to a series of sites that examine the difficult legacies of racism, racial violence, and racial terror.
National Memorial for Peace and Justice
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice forced us to confront the scope and scale of racial terror lynchings in the United States. The memorial consists of over 800 suspended steel markers — one for each county in the US where someone was lynched — and includes the names and dates of those who were lynched.
This was an extremely emotional but important stop. Reading the names of the people who were lynched in each US county was heartbreaking.
Mothers of Gynecology Park
We were in for another surprise at Mothers of Gynecology Park when we got to meet with Michelle Browder, sculptor of the Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey Monument. The monument was under the cover of a tarp due to damage from a recent tornado, but we were able to gather under the tent as Michelle shared about the history of the three enslaved women who were experimented on by Dr. Marion Sims and her artistic choices in creating the monument.
Women’s health and rights, especially those of Black women, is so important. I am thrilled we were able to unveil the monument and hear Michelle talk about her inspiration and artistic choices.
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration weaved a thread from the past to the present through expansive and haunting exhibits that covered enslavement, reconstruction, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration.
The Legacy museum showed the progression of racial terror and oppression from the days of chattel slavery up to our lives today. This part of the trip resonated with me deeply.
Day 7: Montgomery
Our last day in Montgomery focused on sites related to the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Rosa Parks Museum
We started the day at the Rosa Parks Museum where we learned about Rosa Parks and how her refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus on December 1, 1955 resulted in her arrest and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The exhibits also featured other important players in the boycott including Jo Ann Robinson and the Women’s Political Council, who operationalized and sustained the year long boycott, as well as the young Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who became the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and spokesman of the movement.
Montgomery Civil Rights Tour
We finished the day with a walking and bus tour of significant sites of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery including the spot Rosa Parks was arrested, a marker commemorating the bus boycott, First Baptist Church, the Alabama State Capitol, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial, Holt Street Baptist Church, Georgia Gilmore’s house, the Dexter Parsonage (where the King’s lived), Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s house, and the building at Alabama State University where Jo Ann Robinson printed the flyers announcing the bus boycott.
The intentionality of walking the same streets and routes as some of the bus boycotters was transformative. And the closeness of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to the Alabama State Capitol put into perspective the significance of location and proximity.
Day 8: Birmingham
The last stop of our pilgrimage brought us to another pivotal location of the Civil Rights Movement.
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Kelly Ingram Park, and 16th Street Baptist Church
At the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute we learned about Birmingham’s roots as an industrial city, how the city gained the moniker ‘Bombingham’ for the frequent bombings directed at Black residents, and about the 1963 Birmingham Campaign which thrust the city into the international spotlight.
In Kelly Ingram Park, we walked a path that told more of the story: how the children’s march filled the city’s jails, and how law enforcement retaliated by siccing dogs and turning water hoses on civil rights demonstrators.
Our stay in Birmingham concluded with a guided tour of 16th Street Baptist Church that covered the church’s history, it’s importance during the Civil Rights Movement, and the bombing on September 15, 1963 that killed four young girls attending Sunday school.
The tour of 16th Street Baptist Church was very humbling. I will never forget the story of what happened here.
Returning home: Milwaukee
We return home to Milwaukee — also known as “the Selma of the North” — with a greater appreciation for the historical weight this moniker carries.
We return also to an uncomfortable truth that many of the gains won during the Civil Rights Movement, such as voting rights, are under fierce attack today.
We return to a reality in which anti-Black violence has evolved rather than been eradicated; in which enslavement continues in the form of mass-incarceration.
We return with the heavy hearts of witnesses: having heard cries — individual and collective — of pain, loss, and sacrifice; having stood upon the very dirt and pavement made sacred by the steadfast pounding of foot soldiers and the spilled blood of martyrs.
We return with a spirit of resilience: drawing energy and inspiration from the many ways Black institutions (churches, schools, and presses) reclaimed their narratives from a culture that has historically attempted to silence or erase them.
We return committed to transformation: having heard first-hand testimonies of the hard work and struggle that goes into creating change; having seen the fruits of efforts to construct museums and monuments that carry on the tradition of protest and reclaim consequential spaces.
We return carrying within us the responsibility and conviction to speak, act, and work for justice.
We return with a passion for human rights that will infuse our studies, activism, and careers with a purpose greater than ourselves.
We return empowered and inspired.
By our faith.
By our knowledge.
By our courage.
We return with our eyes on the prize of freedom and liberation. Because none of us are free until all of us are free.
And we return with hope. Because if it’s been done before, we can do it again.
