Spring 2018 Civil Rights Tour

In Spring 2018, I will lead a Civil Rights Tour to Alabama where we’ll visit Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma.

These cities set the scenes for some of the nation’s most iconic civil rights battles. This class allows students to experience the places where black southerners claimed their rights as Americans. Before the trip, students will study the geography, history, and culture of the state focusing on the intersections of race, gender, geography, and poverty. During the trip, students will visit important civil rights sites, meet with current scholars and activists, and explore how Alabama memorializes its difficult history. As our nation debates how to commemorate the civil rights struggles of our past and faces numerous social justice challenges in our present, students can get first-hand experience and knowledge about the region and the issues important to understanding historical memory.

See images from previous civil rights tours in Mississippi and Alabama

Minnesota State Mankato student, Sara Baranczyk, explores Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham.
A Birmingham resident gazes toward the 16th Street Baptist Church where four little girls died in a Klan bombing in 1963.

Students meet a civil rights activist in Mississippi.
Students visit the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968.
A plantation in the Mississippi Delta
Students try southern fare at the Big Apple Inn in Jackson, Mississippi.
Students learn about the civil rights movement from Jackson State professor Robert Luckett.