Day one of the 2025 Civil Rights Trip

It was still dark at 4am.
 

The news cycle had hardly begun, but the headlines were already exhausting.
 

Leave it to Gordon to let some light in. 
 

The eighth grade left this morning on an adventure that will bring them nose to nose with some difficult truths about American history.
 

The details can be frightening.
 

There’s a reason people avoid discussing these topics.
 

But these students are also going to connect with people who have been living with these truths every day.
 

They’re going to get a glimpse of how truth and justice can lead to a better world
 

and experience some of the joy a community can earn through honesty and hard work.
 

Wanda Battle met Gordon in downtown Montgomery for a tour of the city’s history.
 

She’d barely introduced herself when she began an intense and deliberate process of getting to know the students.
 

She asked for their names. She repeated their names. Then she challenged each one to say what their passion was.
 

She would not take no for an answer.
 

She would not move on to the next child until she had gotten a genuine smile.
 

It was delightful, and it was challenging.
 

She met bakers and crocheters and swimmers and pilots and dancers and readers.
 

It was work, and by the time she had finished, she had made an authentic connection with each student.
 

Wanda Battle was born during the Montgomery bus boycott.
 

Her childhood home was next door to the Montgomery Improvement Association.
 

That home, and the historic headquarters of the boycott, were both razed during the urban renewal of the late 1960s.
 

The neighborhood is only now barely beginning to recover.
 

This is how her stories go: there’s pride, and sadness, and humor, and anger, in quick succession.
 

Time piles up on itself, too. The slave warehouse where the Lehman Brothers got their start is down the street from offices of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is around the corner from the bus stop where Rosa Parks began her famous bus ride, directly next to the spot where the slave market stood, now the site of a fountain decorated for Mardi Gras.
 

She peppered the Gordon students with questions and was thrilled by their responses. They knew who Viola Liuzzo was. They knew who died May 25th, 2020. They knew what NAACP stands for, who Fred Gray’s clients were, and what Rosa Parks did for a living.
 

The banter was quick and warm.
 

The connection was real.
 

And even the hard questions were received with grace.
 

The long day ended with Michelle Browder, an artist and activist who has an extraordinary suite of projects underway on the edge of Montgomery’s downtown.
 

She opened her visit with a deep breath of rosemary, pulled from a garden planted in memory of enslaved girls. 
 

“This is American history,” she told them. “It’s strong. It stinks. We’ve got to change the way it smells, by reckoning. Sitting with it, looking at it. Talking about it. Thinking about it. Digesting it. Then we’ve got to inhale and cleanse our palate.”
 

The front yard of Browder’s complex is full of sculpture, including a reimagined car honoring her aunt, Aurelia Browder, a midwife who lent six cars to support the Montgomery bus boycott.
 

The centerpiece of the yard is a set of three female forms, covered with words, names, and found objects.
 

They honor three enslaved women, “the Mothers of Gynecology,” who were subjected to cruel experiments by Montgomery doctor J. Marion Sims, the “so-called ‘father of gynecology.’”

The sculpture served as teaching aids for Ms. Browder as she drew out dozens of hidden stories: the horrifying details of early gynecological science, the invention of the sanitary napkin, Joanne Robinson’s mimeograph machine and its role in the Civil Rights Movement, the practice of using enslaved girls to “replenish the stock” of labor, some difficult stories and others heroic. 
 

She also shared generously of her own life story, including its darker moments.
 

The space she has created in Montgomery is a laboratory for truth telling.
 

It’s also a place to reap the rewards of truth telling.
 

For dinner, she invited the eighth graders deeper into her property, to a house full of art and the scent of a delicious buffet. 

And after dinner, she invited them out into the dark backyard.
 

They danced and shouted, unselfconsciously.

They dared to sing karaoke, and cheered each other on warmly.

Then they danced again, together.

They had been up since four am.

It was a joyful end to a hard day.
 

On to day two

More photos from day one

More on Gordon's annual Civil Rights Trip