Day 3 Sophia

Today, the third day of our Civil Rights trip, we spent the morning in Montgomery, Alabama, and the afternoon touring Selma with a Civil Rights activist. This morning we went to the Equal Justice Institute, or EJI. There were two locations, the actual museum, and the lynching memorial. The museum was created and curated by Bryan Stevenson, an activist and lawyer. The first location, the museum, had many interactive exhibits and very interesting videos regarding lynching, mass incarceration, and slavery. Some of these include: phone conversations with inmates, conversations with people in slavery, and many stories of lynching. The people working at the museum went around to different lynching sites and collected soil. Now, in the museum, there is a wall full of jars of dirt, in order to honor and name those who were lynched.

The second section of the museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, was very impactful to me. It was crazy to see the amount of people that were wrongfully killed over the course of the movement. There were also stories on the walls, explaining the reasons why people were lynched, and some of them were completely ridiculous-- an example of one is a black man walking behind a white woman, who was then punished by being lynched. This part of the museum was the most powerful to me.

This afternoon, we met Civil Rights activist Joanne Bland. We met for lunch and ate Southern comfort food. We then went on a tour around the historic Alabama city of Selma. Joanne was a fan of tradition, and she had us address her as ma’am; she let the teachers eat lunch first, because they are our elders. Most of our tour was on the bus, where we drove around Selma and learned its history. One of the most historic events from Selma was the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Joanne, when she wasn’t even a teenager yet, participated in this march. She was a victim of Bloody Sunday, an attack on the marchers. Bloody Sunday occurred on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which we had the opportunity to walk over. The marchers were shot, beaten, and exposed to tear gas. Walking over the bridge where all of this happened brought up many different feelings for me. I felt very sad, knowing that I was on the site of this horrible event. Joanne gave a wonderful tour of the city and provided us with great information about her experiences.

Today, we saw some very important places for the Civil Rights Movement. I really enjoyed our experiences today, and many of my classmates felt the same way. The EJI Museum was very interesting, one of the most amazing we have ever been to, and Joanne was a wonderful tour guide for the city of Selma.