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Home , Freedom Rides Museum, Kelly Ingram Park, Rosa Parks Museum, Zelda Fitzgerald

Tufts Travel-Learn Turning Points of the

Montgomery • Selma • Birmingham

November 10–14, 2021

INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR DESIGN, INC. 4115 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite 101 • Washington, DC 20016 Tel: (202) 244-1448 • Fax (202) 244-1808 • E-mail: [email protected]

TOUR HIGHLIGHTS

Ø Join Tuft’s Professor and gain a comprehensive appreciation of the American Civil Rights Movement, from its earliest and often unreported days in the mid- 1950s through the more high-profile years that followed.

Ø Visit the newly opened Montgomery Interpretive Center on the campus of State University.

Ø Stand in the places where the was planned and sustained.

Ø Experience the best of Southern comfort and hospitality while savoring home- cooked soul food in restaurants selected for their high quality and ambiance.

Ø Stand in the pulpits where Martin Luther King, Jr. motivated thousands.

Ø Visit the in Montgomery, a circular black granite table that records the names of the martyrs and chronicles the history of the movement.

Ø Hear from civil rights organizers who risked life and limb to gain freedom.

Ø across the , and follow the footsteps of thousands who marched from Selma to Montgomery and beyond for equal voting rights.

Ø Hear perform songs that they sang to raise awareness during the height of the movement (pending confirmation).

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Wednesday, November 10: Arrivals in Montgomery, Alabama

Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa – Downtown (D)

• Arrival at Montgomery Alabama (MBM). • Independent transfers to the hotel. • After checking in at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa, take an informative 2.5- hour orientation bus tour of Montgomery and hear about its Civil Rights and Civil War history from local Montgomery historian and publisher Randall Williams. See the key sites of the bus boycott, freedom rides, sit-ins, etc., leavened with background about slavery, Reconstruction, and post-civil rights developments. Enjoy exterior visits to the Dexter church and parsonage, Museum, EJI Legacy Museum, and . • Finish at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a six-acre site overlooking downtown Montgomery, in April 2018, a national memorial to commemorate the victims of lynching in the United States. • Join fellow travelers for a tour orientation meeting and Tufts study leader’s lecture. [Maybe bring in a speaker from the Equal Justice Initiative or have the orientation meeting with them.] • Walk to Dreamland Barbeque for a welcome dinner.

Thursday, November 11: Montgomery, Alabama

Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa – Downtown (B, L)

• Walk to EJI’s Legacy Museum (closed Tuesdays). In 2018, EJI opened the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, located on the site of a former warehouse where black people were enslaved in Montgomery. The museum displays and interprets the history of slavery and racism in America. The progress through the museum is chronological, beginning with slavery, and passing through the decades of lynching, extrajudicial violence against blacks, through the Civil Rights era, and dealing with present issues. • Following a traditional southern lunch at Pannie-Georges Kitchen (closed Tuesdays), visit the (closed Saturday and Sunday), whose collection comprises materials related to the events and accomplishments of individuals associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. • Continue to the Freedom Rides Museum (closed Sunday and Monday) located in the Greyhound Bus Station, where the were brutally attacked by an angry white mob, and learn how these brave young activists helped change our nation’s history and end transportation segregation. • Finish at the soon-to-be-open Montgomery Interpretive Center (March 2020 opening was delayed March due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The center is situated on the grounds of

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Alabama State University and focuses on events that occurred between March 12 to March 25, 1965. It is the third in a line of three Interpretive Centers stretching from Selma to Montgomery that are operated by the . • Enjoy a free evening.

Day 3: Selma

Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa – Downtown (B, L)

• Drive an hour to Selma breaking up the drive with a visit to the Marchers Memorial and Interpretive Center in Lowndes County that provides an overview of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March of 1965, the first to open of the three aforementioned interpretive centers. Lowndes County is notable for its role in Black Belt voting rights organization, violence ( and both killed there), as well as artifacts of the plantation cotton culture. • March over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, sight of “Bloody Sunday,” where 600 marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. See the Selma Interpretive Center, the second center to open, which focuses on the events leading up to the march in Selma along with what happened in the city in the first days. • Take a guided tour at the National Voting Rights Museum, which exhibits materials and artifacts from the voting rights struggle in America. • Enjoy lunch in Selma. **Maybe Kitchen Luncheon, interactive with local leaders or cooking class, schedule permitting** • Continue to National Historic Landmark Brown Chapel AME church, where 600 marchers gathered before attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery on “Bloody Sunday.” • Upon return to Montgomery, enjoy independent time for dinner. • Pending schedule, attend a concert performed by one of the original Freedom Singers at the Dexter Ave Baptist Church. Formed in 1962, the Freedom Singers strove to educate communities about civil rights issues through song, most of which are spirituals or hymns, with characteristic “call-and-response” and free improvisation.

Day 4: Birmingham

Renaissance Montgomery Hotel & Spa – Downtown (B, L, D)

• Drive 90 minutes to Birmingham. • Visit the National Historic Landmark 16th Street Baptist Church and view the exhibition in the basement, with pictures of the events of the Civil Rights movement and the aftermath of the 1963 bombing. • Enjoy independent time for personal exploration of the , the central staging ground for large-scale demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement.

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• Continue to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a large interpretive museum and research center that depicts the struggles of the Movement. The “living institution” displays lessons of the past as a positive way to chart directions for the future. • Listen to guest speaker, possibly an assistant to Senator Doug Jones, who will discuss the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church Bombings, that killed four girls. Jones successfully prosecuted the remaining bombers of the church in 2001. • Enjoy lunch with a guest speaker familiar with the Civil Rights movement. • Return to Montgomery. • Gather for a farewell dinner at one of Montgomery’s best restaurants.

Day 5: Departures (B) • Transfer to the Southern Poverty Law Center and discuss the Center’s important work in protecting those that have been victims of hate groups. • Visit the Moore Tyson House where visited her sister who was married to Tyson, pending confirmation. The house is privately owned by Julian McPhillips, author of Civil Rights in My Bones: More Colorful Stories from a Lawyer's Life and Work, 2005– 2015. —or— • Visit the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum is the only museum dedicated to the lives and legacies of F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald in the world. The Fitzgeralds lived here from 1931 until 1932, writing portions of their respective novels, and during their time in Montgomery. • Check-out of your hotel. • Independent transfers to the airport for departures home.

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