Bridging History, Truth, And Purpose: A Civil Rights Learning Tour In The South
Bridging History, Truth, And Purpose: A Civil Rights Learning Tour In The South
Last month, I joined Common Power and staff of the Seattle Seahawks on a transformative civil rights learning tour. We walked through history, faced the present, and grew inspired to shape the future.
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On a cloudy April afternoon, a group of about 30 of us were standing in a circle at the Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Alabama. Rain drizzled sporadically, giving us a break from the southern heat. Our learning tour group represented just about every demographic you can imagine, from young to old, BIPOC to white, political junkies to more casual news consumers. We looked like America. The real America.
As we stood on the sidewalk in front of the monument, a bearded white man in a white pickup truck began circling the block, slowing his speed and staring us down each time he passed by. The group was listening attentively to Mr. Charles Mauldin, a foot soldier of the Civil Rights movement who was the sixth person behind John Lewis, as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. Mr. Charles spoke to us about the significance of the journey the Freedom Riders took and the tragedy that unfolded as their bus was attacked and firebombed by a racist mob.
As we were engrossed in the harrowing story, some of us in the group began to take notice of the pickup truck and kept an eye on its movements. The circling became increasingly menacing. As he drove by us for a final time, the driver yelled out the truck, “Y’all better get back on that bus now!”
A chill swept over the group. Within our first few hours of being in Alabama, we were delivered a swift reminder that although we’ve made a lot of progress in America, the hatred that sought to justify slavery and Jim Crow still reverberated throughout our country.
Moments later, we stood in another circle before re-boarding our tour bus. Each person shared their takeaways from the Freedom Riders Monument. A white participant of the tour, Charlie, spoke about how he might have been old enough to have joined the Freedom Riders. He wondered aloud if he should’ve been on one of those buses fighting for freedom.
Charles Mauldin simply replied: “That’s not the last bus.”
The six days I spent in the South on this Civil Rights Learning Tour were filled with moments like these. As we were going through this journey of experiential learning, countless circumstances situated us in the present, reminded us of the work still left to be done, and highlighted the urgency of America’s ongoing struggle to guarantee everyone equal rights under the Constitution.
Running this learning tour is the Institute for Common Power, a branch of the civic engagement nonprofit Common Power. Common Power organizes volunteers nationwide to mobilize for Democratic campaigns. They also run nonpartisan educational programs as part of their “education to action” pipeline.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve partnered with their nonpartisan youth education arm, Common Power Future, to provide media literacy lectures to hundreds of college students across the US. When Common Power invited me to go on this learning tour, it was an easy yes.
Common Power Executive Director Charles Douglas III, Director of The Institute and historian Dr. Terry Anne Scott, and Associate Director of Org Development David Domke have been running these tours for years. They call these educational excursions “Truth & Purpose Learning Experiences.”
“We do these tours because we believe this kind of education is foundational to a healthy democracy,” Dr. Scott told me. “It is a profound experience that will imbue you with a heightened level of compassion and respect for history makers as it inspires you to help create a future defined by integrity, equity, and democracy.”
This particular tour was special. For the second year in a row, Karen Wilkins-Mickey, VP of DEI at the Seattle Seahawks, organized a group of young Seahawks employees to join the learning tour. Retired defensive end and Super Bowl Champion Michael Bennett also attended with his daughter.
“Doing these trips brings people together to learn and grow. It helps to build my very own organizational foot soldiers beyond the DEI department. People come back transformed and wanting to do more. This experience isn’t something I want to do a PowerPoint about; I want them to see it, feel it, and embrace the learning,” Karen Wilkins-Mickey told me.
This won’t be the last tour the Seahawks go on, Wilkins-Mickey assured me: “We have now taken 28 people on the tour, and we aren’t done. This is just the start of more educational experiences to learn about the heritage and different cultures that make up America.”
The tour began on the historic Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia, where we visited the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park Visitor Center and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King once preached. We then took a bus to the Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Alabama. We spent the rest of the five days in Alabama, visiting different historical sites, museums, the state Capital, and ended it by crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
One thing that stood out to me as we all went on this historical journey together was that despite coming from vastly different backgrounds, we were drawn together. As we literally walked through America’s history of systemic racism, we shared emotionally vulnerable moments. We oscillated between hope and sorrow, fear and joy, struggle and purpose. Far from dividing us, as some demagogues who seek to ban teachings of racial justice history allege, learning this history united us.
The mere existence of our group gathering in these historically segregated areas was emblematic of the advances we’ve made in racial justice. But still, the work left to be done loomed over our trip like an ever-present Confederate statue.
We were constantly faced with the two Americas and how the choices we make as individuals and as a country shape our character and future.
One illustration of the different visions of America could be seen in the dichotomy of the truck driver who told us to get back on the bus in Anniston and a park ranger we saw earlier that same day in Atlanta.
On our first day, we were in Atlanta, and we sat in the church pews of the original Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final sermon. A white park ranger (I wish I got his name) delivered a moving history of not only MLK Jr., but of his father and grandfather. The park ranger spoke off the cuff, showcasing a deep, intimate knowledge of the King family and the history of racism in Atlanta. He did not mince words in his description of the racism that the King family fought against, and his history lesson was a forceful act of anti-racism.
The remarks from this park ranger reverberated in my head as I watched the racist white truck driver, who clearly appeared to hold racist sentiments, yell at us to get back on the bus when we arrived in Anniston. The driver kind of looked like the park ranger, but they chose totally different paths.
The park ranger chose to engage himself in the history of the South’s struggle for civil rights, while the truck driver chose a path that led him to yell at a diverse group of people simply standing at a civil rights monument. What happened in their upbringing that led them down these different outcomes? How were they raised? What opportunities for growth were afforded to the park ranger that weren’t given to the truck driver? What choices did they make? What kind of education did they have? Maybe the park ranger had a better education at home and at school, and that moved him in a direction of inclusion and understanding, I thought to myself.
For me, these moments highlighted the importance of education and how it can spark action and vastly different outcomes for individuals and our country. This is the reason Common Power does these tours, their Executive Director Charles Douglas told me. They believe education can be a catalyst for action. Judging by how the rest of this tour went, I saw in real-time how that hypothesis was proven correct.
Over the next five days, we embarked on a transformative experience of education and camaraderie.
On the second day, we visited the Alabama State Capitol, where Terry Anne Scott and David Domke taught the group about the through-line between the Confederate Lost Cause and the current right-wing extremism plaguing our country. The eloquent history lessons we received from Terry and David throughout the tour were incredibly impressive. Their knowledge was deep, and their passion for racial justice shined through.
We sat in a circle outside the Capitol building, discussing the legacy of the Confederacy. A Seahawks staffer, Dajah, grew emotional speaking about the presence of Confederate monuments at her alma mater and how it made Black students like her feel undervalued. It was a powerful display of vulnerability that set the tone for the rest of the trip.
Lukas Michener, an educator who works with The Institute for Common Power, spoke about his experience being targeted by a right-wing talk show host in reaction to his history lessons, highlighting the ongoing attacks on education in America.
Lukas is right. Since January 2021, Republican lawmakers in 44 states have introduced bills or taken steps to restrict or limit how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, and LGBTQ issues. 18 have enacted them. Book bans have surged in states like Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina.
After that day at the Alabama Capitol, I couldn’t help but wonder if those who believe Confederate monuments should be preserved and that important history education should be banned would think twice after experiencing a tour like this one. After the events of the next day, I was sure that this kind of experience could change even the most bigoted person.
On Saturday, day three of our tour, our group visited The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama. It was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had. The museum vividly depicted the impacts of the slave trade and revealed how widespread across the US it actually was. I was surprised to find out that 42 percent of New York households owned slaves in 1703.
There were holograms of slave children crying out for their parents. There were displays depicting the brutality slaves faced. I was struck by the weaponized cruelty. We weren’t allowed to use our phones during the exhibits, so we were all enthralled by the experience, silently absorbing the information.
In the museum, I spent a lot of time reading the history of Civil Rights-related Supreme Court rulings. I saw the modern parallels in the logic used by the justices in an 1883 ruling that struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The court ruled that enough time had passed since slavery and Black people were no longer the “privileged favorite.” This same thought process was used by Chief Justice John Roberts in the 5-4 conservative majority ruling in the 2013 Shelby v. Holder case that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Justice Roberts claimed that “Our country has changed.”
Any objective observer can see that although our country has changed, it has not changed nearly enough to justify rolling back civil rights protections. There are still countless attacks on the right to vote that disproportionately target Black Americans. And the peak of the Civil Rights movement was only 60 years ago. The fact that so many Civil Rights heroes are still alive today showcases just how recent the Jim Crow era was. That night, we had dinner with some of those heroes.
We visited Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr. and his wife, Kate Bulls Lafayette, for a talk and dinner. Dr. Lafayette Jr. was a key figure of the Civil Rights movement and a member of Dr. King Jr.’s inner circle. He shared stories from his younger days before he joined the movement that proved to be both poignant and hilarious.
After we listened to Dr. Lafayette Jr.’s stories, we broke out into songs. Mark, one of the members of our tour group, was a musician and would often bring out his guitar to lead us in songs from the Civil Rights era. He would be joined by Mr. Charles Mauldin and Ivory Kennedy Jr., a young educator from Ohio, who should actually go in the studio because he can really sing. The melody, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around,” is still stuck in my head a month later.
Each day of heavy learning was punctuated with unbridled joy. The bus ride home from our visit with Dr. Lafayette Jr. was no different.
That moment was something special. Mr. Charles Mauldin took me aside the next day and talked about how it was joyful moments that kept the Civil Rights Movement going through seemingly insurmountable adversity.
“Music and common purpose create a type of chemistry.” Mr. Charles told me. “These moments of camaraderie, like last night, are the fuel that creates movements”
On the final day, we visited Selma, Alabama. It just so happened to be Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama.
First, we visited a cemetery that was filled with Confederate monuments and Confederate flags. We saw the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general who later became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. I felt angry because the monuments were very clean and well-kept. I saw workers at the gravesite upkeeping and cleaning these statues dedicated to racist traitors. The workers were Black.
After we visited this bastion of the Confederacy, we switched gears to visit with those who fought on the frontlines against the descendants of Confederate ideology.
We visited the Common Power building right near the Edmund Pettus Bridge - a visit The Selma Times Journal wrote about. We spent the day with another civil rights icon, Joanne Bland, the youngest person to be jailed during the protests in Selma.
We visited the Foot Soldiers Park and played a game of basketball. Ms. Bland is as funny as she is instructive. Our time with her felt like we were with our favorite teacher back in school. She told us about how this very park was where the marchers assembled before crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She had us pick up rocks to take home with us as mementos of the movement.
After this, we went back to the Common Power building and were given an impactful talk by Joanne Bland and another foot soldier of the movement. Then, we heard an inspiring call to action from Charles Douglas III and 25-year-old Fieldwork Sr. Program Manager Binh Truong. Binh implored the tour group to leap into action after what they learned, and volunteer with Common Power’s fieldwork division that is mobilizing in Democratic campaigns across the country.
We were fired up and ready to go. It was then, that we crossed the legendary Edmund Pettus Bridge with Mr. Charles Mauldin. To cross this bridge with one of the foot soldiers who walked the same periolous path on Bloody Sunday was beyond moving.
It felt like an act of defiance crossing this historic symbol of Civil Rights resilience on Confederate Memorial Day, of all days. The existence of this “holiday” is emblematic of how much work we still have to do, I thought to myself.
Throughout this learning tour, members of the group repeatedly shared how moved they were by the experience and how it will change the way they move in the world moving forward. Some said they plan to volunteer in this year’s election. Others said they plan to get more involved in their community back home.
I know I was personally transformed by this experience. Common Power’s Truth & Purpose Learning Tour lived up to the hype.
Reading about the history of slavery and the Civil Rights movement is one thing, but experiencing it is another thing entirely. I felt reinvigorated and inspired to work even harder. We all have to. It’s the least we can do for those who fought so hard to try and make America live up to its stated ideals.
The beauty of America is that despite who we were as a country yesterday or who we are today, we as a people have the power to decide who we will be tomorrow. The bridge to a better America will be tough to cross, but if enough of us decide to make that journey together, we just might change the country for the better.
