Juniors Travel to the South

MEMPHIS--This doll exhibit, on display at the Lorraine Museum in Memphis, Tenn., is about an experiment conducted during the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. This was a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1954 to desegregate public schools throughout the country and ended the racist “separate but equal” doctrine of the court's 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision.  In the experiment, the government gave eleme...

MONTGOMERY -- There was one plaque of a guy who was whipped to death after being interrogated for a crime he did not commit.  Complaining when a white store owner refused to serve a Black man was a reason on a plaque that a Black man was killed.  From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 people were lynched, according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).   Black pe...

MEMPHIS -- I was on a school trip to Alabama and Tennessee to learn the dark history of the South.  We stopped at the site where Tyre Nichols died after five Memphis police officers brutally beat and tased him.  The death of Nichols was devastating and bewildering, as the 29-year-old father was pulled over for “reckless driving” Jan. 7, 2023, according to CBS News.  Nichols died of his injuries th...

BIRMINGHAM- Outside of the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum there was a man named David who was simply walking by. He stopped and talked to the group of students I was with for about 10 minutes. Up until this point in the trip, I was bored. Not socially. Academically. David was the person who put everything into perspective for me. He was talking about his personal life and his accounts of the ci...