Day three of the 2019 Civil Rights Trip

Find a Gordon eighth grader next week.

 

Ask them about the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Museum.

 

Ask them to compare the stories they heard at the Museum about enslaved Africans and the ones they heard about African Americans in the Alabama prison system.

 

Ask about the relationship between lynching and the death penalty.

 

Ask which was here first: slavery or racism?

 

Ask what the museum confirmed about what they'd learned at Gordon over the years.

 

Ask if they learned anything new.

 

Ask about the lawyers they met from the Equal Justice Initiative.

 

Ask what the Equal Justice Initiative does.

 

Ask if they understood the part about jury selection, judicial overrides and racial bias.

 

What did the lawyers say when the Gordon students asked how they support youth who've been freed from prison?

 

What did the lawyers say when the Gordon students asked them about a typical day in the life of an EJI lawyer?

 

Ask about the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, built to honor those who lost their lives through lynchings.

 

What was on the pillars?

 

Ask if they recognized any of the places that were listed.

 

Any of the names?

 

Ask how it felt to walk beneath the pillars.

 

Do the eighth graders know they were the first Gordon students to visit this site?

 

Do they realize that this was the first memorial built to honor these people?

 

 

 

Do they have a sense of how rare it is to hear lynching discussed frankly and thoroughly in public?

 

Ask: how did it feel to go from the Center for Peace and Justice to Dexter Avenue Church?

 

Did Ms. Colvin really hug every single one of you?

What did Ms. Battle tell you about the years when Dr. King was pastor there?

 

What did she have you sing?

 

What was she quizzing Dr. Thomas López about?

 

What did she quiz you on?

 

How many miles are there from Selma to Montgomery, anyway?

 

Was your humanities teacher proud of you?

 

What was that mural in the basement? 

 

How many of those sites did you see over the course of the week?

 

Ask them how long they'd been looking forward to this trip.

 

Ask them if their Gordon teachers had prepared them well over the years.

 

Ask them if it was what they imagined it would be.

 

Ask them if they understand why Gordon has done this trip every year for eighteen years.

 

Ask them if Gordon should keep on doing it.

 

 

back to day two

 

many more photos from day three

video and further notes, including some of the goofier moments, on Twitter and Facebook