Students start their day in Birmingham with a tour of the 16th Street Baptist Church. The church is still active today, and during the Civil Rights Movement, it served as a meeting place for the organization of marches and other civil rights activities.
Miles College President Bobbie Knight visits with students in Birmingham. Knight was elected in August 2019 as the fifteenth president and first woman to serve in this role. Miles is a private, liberal arts historically Black college with roots in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Dr. Jonathan McPherson (front left), Dr. Richard Arrington and Miles College President Bobbie Knight share stories about the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and the work that is still needed to improve race relations.
Dr. Jonathan McPherson was a chemistry professor at Miles College when he served as a bodyguard for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He described the work he did alongside King, and helped protect the civil rights leader when he stayed in Birmingham at a house on “Dynamite Hill.” The neighborhood was given that name, McPherson explained, because of the many bombing by the Ku Klux Klan.
Dr. Richard Arrington was elected the first Black mayor of Birmingham in 1979, and served for 20 years. Arrington discussed how he focused on addressing police brutality while in office, and the importance of hiring more people of color to serve in important local government roles. Today, Arrington is a Miles College alumnus and serves as a Distinguished Professor.
Students explore the Birmingham Civil Rights District.
A Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. statue in Birmingham, Alabama's Kelly Ingram Park, sits across from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and 16th Street Baptist Church.
In 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, resulting in the deaths of four young black girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair and Carole Robertson. This event galvanized the federal government to take action on civil rights legislation.
In 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, resulting in the deaths of four young black girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair and Carole Robertson. This event galvanized the federal government to take action on civil rights legislation.
Homemade bombs planted by white supremacists in homes and churches became so commonplace that the city was sometimes known as “Bombingham.”
On the same side that the bomb went off, a large stained-glass mural of Jesus stands. Being on the same side as the bomb it should have been destroyed, but only the face of Jesus was damaged, leaving the rest of the mural intact. The tour guide explained that many believed that this happened because “not even God could look at what happened that day in 1963.”
The 16th Street Baptist Church is still active today, and every year on the anniversary of the bombing, the church bells in downtown Birmingham will toll at 10:22 a.m., and a memorial wreath will be laid.
Hunter Seidler ’22 and Jamari Washington ’22 reflect on lessons learned after visiting the church.
Dr. Shamira Gelbman, associate professor of political science, addresses students before a visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Museum visitors can experience a rendition of a segregated city in the 1950s, as well as examine a replica of a Freedom Riders bus and even the actual jail cell door from behind which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
Nate Butts ’23 and Logan Smith ’23 take a stop inside the museum’s “Barriers Gallery.” From its earliest days, from the 1920s-1950s, Birmingham was a city of two worlds: Black and White. People lived and worked side by side, however, double standards and segregation of all races were facts of life.
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has photos and a piece of stained glass on display from the historic bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Heisman Skeens ’23 and Horacio Garcia-Rojas ’23 stop to read about racial stereotypes depicted in advertising and entertainment throughout history. One example on display included the creating of the Aunt Jemima mammy logo.
Carter Nevil ’24 stops and reads information displayed within the “Human Rights Gallery” exhibit.
Students stop for a photo with a new George Floyd painting on display at the museum. Floyd was murdered in 2020 by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest after a store clerk suspected he may have used a counterfeit bill. His death spurred nationwide protests against police brutality.
The Civil Rights Immersion Road Trip included a stop in Anniston where a Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders in 1961 were met violence by an armed white mob, led by Ku Klux Klan leader William Chapel.
Students visited various sites and markers that honored the Freedom Riders’ influence on the Civil Rights Movement.
Freedom Riders were groups of white and Black civil rights activists who participated in bus trips through the South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers and violence from protestors along their routes.
The site of the 1961 bus burning and the former Greyhound station in downtown Anniston are now part of the National Park Service and are dedicated to the Freedom Riders’ achievements in the fight for civil rights.
The site of the 1961 bus burning and the former Greyhound station in downtown Anniston are now part of the National Park Service and are dedicated to the Freedom Riders’ achievements in the fight for civil rights.
When 18 Wabash students visited the Mississippi Delta on the third day of the civil rights road trip, they felt the impact of what they had spent the semester learning in class.
Each stop got quieter. Many heads shook in disappointment throughout the day. Tears rolled down cheeks as students and faculty experienced the retelling of the brutal murder of Emmett Till.
“We hurt for the 14-year-old Black boy who was tortured, mutilated, shot, and discarded into the river with no regard for his mother, his family, and his humanity,” Leo Dilts ’24, Michael Rojas ’23 and Jackson Miller ’23 wrote in a blog post about the day. “We felt a sense of sorrow, rage, and helplessness, even 66 years removed.
“Being able to see the locations where this happened and hearing from the people who work to remember him resonated deeply with us,” the students wrote. “It was the type of learning that cannot be done in a classroom.”
The Power of Immersion Learning
The day started with a visit to the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi, where students filed into the Tallahatchie County Courthouse and met with Public Engagement and Museum Education Director Benjamin Saulsberry.
As student from Professor Shamira Gelbman’s “Politics of the Civil Rights Movement” and Professor Heidi Winters Vogel’s “Civil Rights and the Black Arts Movement” courses sat in the same seats where Till’s murder trial took place, Saulsberry recounted the crime that brought nationwide attention to the racial violence and injustice prevalent in Mississippi.
“Being here, in this courtroom years later, it feels like emotions are still high,” Nate Butts ’23 said while reflecting with his peers. “How could the pain from something like this go away? The fact that this could happen to a 14-year-old, who was kidnapped and terrorized in the middle of the night, it’s hard to believe and really understand.”
“It’s hard to put into words what I’m thinking,” Jamari Washington ’22 said. “You sit at the wrong place. You talk to the wrong woman. You walk the wrong way. You go through the wrong neighborhood or store. And in an instant, you’re being harmed or killed just for being Black. One wrong movement and that’s your life.”
Gelbman said the conversations students engaged in demonstrate the power of immersion learning. She said it’s important for them to interact in concrete ways with the history and political developments they study, and a week-long trip helps accomplish that.
“We can get far with video footage and primary source documents in the classroom, but there's nothing quite like standing in the place where history happened and feeling an embodied connection to it,” Gelbman said. “Different students will take different lessons from it, and I think we saw that happen — both in the class discussions they had during and after the trip and in the presentations after the trip.”
In light of the current political and racial climate, Gelbman said she believes a big part of the impact on many students is that they have come to feel a stronger connection of historical civil rights movement developments to present-day.
“It’s not surprising that many of them sense that action is needed to effect significant progress now,” Gelbman said. “What that action might and should entail is a question that they're hopefully thinking about as they move forward from the trip.”
Igniting Change
Jessie Jaynes-Diming, a civil rights tour guide who took students to the Milam Plantation where it is believed Till was killed, encouraged Wabash students to take the thoughts and emotions they felt throughout the day and to use it as motivation to address systemic racism and injustices.
“I hope this experience will spark a fire in the belly of all of you,” Jaynes-Diming said. “A lot of times, when young people witness the injustices of the world, it ignites them to stand, to be strong and to fight back to make a difference. That is my hope for all of you.”
After students returned to campus, many still reflect on what they experienced during the week-long immersion trip and what they should do now.
“There are forces at work trying to make us forget this problematic history. There are forces that are trying to make us forget about the reasons why civil rights leaders were fighting so hard to secure rights that were owed to them,” Miller said.
“We can’t forget any of that. We have to keep educating ourselves. We have to keep speaking out and advocating for what’s right. It’s going to take action if we want to see progress and real change.”