Sojourn to the Past

Sojourn to the Past is a never-to-be-forgotten two-or-more days journey of study along the path of the Civil Rights Movement in the American South. The moving classroom experience brings history to life as students visit the sites of the Civil Rights Movement, interact with the leaders who devoted their lives to the struggle for social justice, and actually feel the lessons in a way that cannot be captured in a textbook. 

The journey is important not only for its historic value, but for teaching the real lessons of the Movement: tolerance, justice, compassion, hope, perseverance, and non-violence, and for helping students recognize how they can relate these lessons to current human rights issues and incorporate these values into everyday life. Ninety percent of students who have participated in Sojourn rank it as the “best experience I had in high school.” 

The journey will include travel to one or more of the following states:  Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and/or Tennessee.  From the first day, students will be immersed in the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement. Students will analyze Dr. Kings “I Have a Dream” speech in the shadow of Stone Mountain – the birthplace of the 1920’s Ku Klux Klan and the confederate version of Mount Rushmore. This juxtaposition of a message of hope in a setting of entrenched institutional racism sets the tone for what role the participants can play in taking a stand for justice in their schools and communities. 

Students will learn about "Bloody Sunday," which occurred March 7, 1965, when a group of about 525 African American demonstrators gathered at Browns Chapel to demand the right to vote. They walked six blocks to Broad Street, then across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they were met by more than 50 state troopers and a few dozen postmen on horseback. When the demonstrators refused to turn back, they were brutally beaten. At least 17 were hospitalized, and 40 others received treatment for injuries and the effects of tear gas. The attack, which was broadcast on national television, caught the attention of millions of Americans and became a symbol of the brutal racism of the South. Two weeks later, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and 3,200 civil rights protesters marched the 49 miles from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery—an event that prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.

Students will learn about the non-violent civil rights leader Medgar Evers who was murdered in the driveway of his family home by the Klansman Byron De LA Beckwith.  Students will learn why it took more than 30 years to convict Evers’ killer and how different forms of media contributed to the struggle by reading poems and analyzing songs written about the life and death of Medgar Evers. 

Another example of Sojourn’s unique curriculum is an interactive lecture on the historical and Constitutional significance of equal access to education, with a focus on Little Rock Central High School. Watching videos and reading book excerpts, students examine the social and political effects that followed the desegregation of Little Rock.