The first weekend of spring break, the University Honors Program took 22 students on a trip through Georgia and Alabama, stopping at museums memorializing the civil rights movement and its effects on current tensions over human rights, the Equal Justice Initiative and various historic landmarks from the civil rights era.
I was there for the experience and gained a much-needed perspective for my understanding of American racial tensions.
Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia
After stopping for breakfast, we made it to Atlanta for a look at exhibits on the American civil rights movement, global human rights and Martin Luther King Jr.’s years at Morehouse College, his alma mater.
Elton Luong, a junior studying chemical engineering who attended the trip, said that the museum did a good job engaging the audience with its design.
“It was obvious that many designers and architects worked tirelessly over the construction of that place,” Luong said. “It was very beautiful, it was well put together, interactive […] it was more effective than other museums I’ve been to.”
One of the interactive exhibits at the museum simulates the experience of a sit-in protester, such as those who protested at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro. It’s an intense, stressful experience. Participants sit at a faux bar and put headphones on. With eyes closed, the sounds of racial slurs and intimidation from counter-protesters are played through the headphones, and particularly intense moments are coupled with the sensation of the bar stool being jostled.
I couldn’t stand it for very long, and nor could Luong.
“It was really loud, it was really scary and I only lasted 30 seconds, but it was a really eye-opening experience,” Luong said.
Sitting at the bar is truly scary. It’s not like a horror movie because those are fictional. It’s not like a historical documentary, either, because it’s not all in the past; the experience of the protestors in Woolworth’s is paralleled by that of modern protesters of racial prejudice. The slurs thrown by segregationists are the same slurs used by today’s white supremacists. It amplifies the historical experience of racist sentiments as much as it amplifies the modern one.
While exhibits pertaining to the American struggles over civil rights fill the first and second floors of the museum, the museum’s third-floor exhibit explores global events, past and present, relevant to movements that are fighting for human rights. This includes the response to the Rwandan genocide, discrimination against women in Iran, human trafficking and many other movements from around the world.
Malik Majette, a senior studying computer science, said this museum was his favorite stop, and praised the progression of events highlighted by the museum. It takes visitors through the civil rights movement and leads them into contemporary, global fights for human rights.
“It gave a good model for thinking of civil rights as not just something that just happened from the ‘50s and ‘60s but as something that is still happening,” Majette said. “[Discrimination] is not just in America or against African-Americans; it’s against a lot of different populations.”
Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama
The Southern Poverty Law Center sponsored the creation of this memorial, which is made in honor of 40 people who died during their campaign for civil rights. Their stories are not widely known, and the memorial center provides historical context about them and others.
Majette said the center’s focus on lesser known stories from the civil rights era helped to make the history of the movement more real.
“I appreciated them bringing out 40 people who might not have been recognized otherwise,” Majette said. “It was one of the things that made it a little more real.”
Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama
We left the SPLC’s memorial to go down the road for a discussion with the EJI about the law center’s mission and purpose. During a presentation by four employees of the EJI, we discussed the historical framework the EJI uses in its work, which has a focus on how systems of racism in America (lynching and racial terrorism in particular) have led to the current system of prejudice in the judicial system.
For example, the EJI draws a connection between modern racial discrimination in the criminal justice system to the history of racial discrimination against people of color, dating back to the civil rights era. They also draw a link between the death penalty and America’s history of racially motivated lynching.
Students had a chance to discuss the EJI’s work defending children who face life imprisonment or the death penalty and adults on death row, along with some of the EJI’s other initiatives.
Luong said that the Equal Justice Initiative was one of the highlights of the trip and pointed to the EJI’s plans to build a memorial for the victims of lynching as one way they are fighting for civil rights.
“It was awesome to see people working for civil rights, even today,” Luong said.
Leah Nodar, a graduate student studying sociology, humanities and social science, came on the trip for the conversation with the EJI. Nodar found the discussion with the EJI to be interesting and highlighted the part of the discussion pertaining to the Great Migration, which was the migration of African-Americans out of the rural southern United States to other parts of the U.S., northern states in particular, between 1915 and 1960.
The EJI argued, and Nodar said she agreed, that the Great Migration was driven by racial terrorism committed against African-Americans in the South, rather than economics, which had been the general understanding for many years following the migration.
“It was as recent as 1992 that scholars started saying it wasn’t economics that caused African-Americans to move out of the South,” Nodar said. “Finally, someone did some statistics to say, ‘Oh hey, maybe people leave when they’re in danger of being killed.’”
The EJI is challenging modern institutions of racism, starting with the judicial system. For more about the EJI and its mission of fighting injustice within the justice system, visit their website at http://eji.org.
Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama
Just before dawn, we stopped at a park with memorials and sculptures dedicated to various people and events from the civil rights era. On the block just west of the park is Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of a white supremacist terrorist bombing in 1963 that killed four black girls. The victims are memorialized at the site of the bombing outside the church, as well as in statues in Kelly Ingram Park.
Conclusions
Majette said that one of the biggest impact of the trip was making the experience of African-Americans during the civil rights era more real and relatable. According to Majette, the museums achieved this end particularly well.
“What the museums did well was bring to life a lot of the oppression and activism that was happening during that time,” Majette said. “You can read about it in textbooks, but until you can see it face to face, you don’t understand exactly what they were experiencing. It created more understanding of why there’s so much tension today; [it’s] because of everything that’s happened.”
I think Majette is right, and something this trip taught me is how vitally necessary this understanding is for comprehending modern racial tensions in America. Developing this understanding included learning how the death penalty can be historically understood as legalized lynching, how terrorism drove many black people out of the South and getting a taste of what that terrorism looked like. I feel that recognition and reconciliation, personally and societally, is required if we are to make any progress with how we treat the marginalized among us.
Carter Pape is an employee of the University Honors Program.
The students attending the trip, along with staff members overseeing the trip, pose in front of the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.
