Day three of the 2026 Civil Rights Trip

Gordon’s first stop on day three was the Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, seventeen acres that retell the history presented in the EJI’s Legacy Museum.
 

While the Legacy Museum made its case through a dizzying load of facts, testimonies and source materials, the park paraphrases that history through visual art: sculpture, architecture and installations that bypass the didactic and go straight for the heart.
 

The two approaches come together powerfully at the sculpture park’s last piece, a wall with over 100,000 names taken from the 1870 Census, the first census that allowed formerly enslaved people to choose their own last names.
 

It’s an overwhelming work: the scale of the walls, the weight of the history, the irresistible impulse to search for familiar names, the joy of the variety among the names, and the knowledge that this census represented a major step towards freedom and independence for so many.
 

And again it was the heart, not the head, that was engaged when Gordon arrived in Selma later that day.
 

Water Street looked fresh and busy.
 

The recent death of old friend Joanne Bland was being recognized, quietly but undeniably.
 

Everywhere we looked, there were signs that Foot Soldiers Park, Ms. Bland’s nonprofit, was continuing and extending her public education efforts.
 

In true Joanne Bland fashion, these efforts did not simply cover the past, but also critiqued the present day and asked us to look into the future.

Gordon was in Selma to meet Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who, as a nine-year-old, took part in the first attempt at the 1965 Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. This was the Bloody Sunday March, when protesters were met with brutal police violence after crossing Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.
 

Ms. Christburg did not join the movement in a well-considered decision, or even because of a strongly felt belief.
 

As she tells it, she and her friend Rachel were drawn in by Dr. King’s kindness and charisma.
 

It was charm that got them interested in Dr. King’s movement. Her father’s disapproval, and the thrill of misbehaving, were what held young Sheyann’s attention.
 

Christburg grew up in George Washington Carver Projects, immediately next to Brown Chapel AME, where much of the planning happened for the 1965 march.
 

She showed students the church steps where she met Dr. King, and the bedroom window she would sneak out of in order to attend the planning meetings.
 

It seemed like a wildly improbable story.
 

Ms. Christburg made it sound inevitable.
 

This chain of events was something could have happened to anybody, and maybe, Ms. Christburg hinted, something like it will happen to some of Gordon’s Class of 2026.
 

“I spent much of my life as a disobedient child,” she deadpanned, “and I would never tell you to be a disobedient child. But…”
 

“Your teachers here will make sure you do well in school, but in this life, you’ve got to do something beyond being academically excellent. And that something is up to you to discover.”
 

“We need a change, and you are the changemakers we have been waiting for.”
 

The bus stopped at Selma’s Live Oak Cemetery for a jarringly different perspective on Selma’s history.
 

The cemetery has a large area with graves of Confederate soldiers.
 

It’s also home to a number of monuments to secessionists, including one for Confederate general, slave trader and Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest, many of which were relocated here after being taken off public land thanks to the efforts of activists like Ms. Bland.
 

After three days among memorials like the Mothers of Gynecology, the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, and the Civil Rights Memorial at the SPLC, it was stunning to see this history handled in a such a radically different way.
 

And, importantly, these were not mouldering graves in the corner of a forgotten boneyard. These spaces are actively being maintained, a clear sign of just how contested this history still is.
 

Back at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the students were focused.
 

Mr. Brown got on the motor coach PA before they disembarked: “Remember how I told you there were going to be times on this trip when you needed to lock in?”
 

“Times when you need to stop thinking of yourself and start thinking about being part of something bigger than yourself?”
 

“This is one of those times. I’ll see you on the other side of the bridge.”
 

For these students, the walk across the bridge meant participating in a rite of passage they shared with decades of Gordon eighth graders.
 

Having just heard about Ms. Christburg’s father, there was the thrill of doing something transgressive.
 

Knowing the story of Bloody Sunday, they felt an air of the unknown coming over the rise.
 

Having visited Live Oak, they knew that not everyone in the passing cars sympathized with the very public act they were undertaking.
 

And Mr. Brown’s instructions meant that they were absorbing the experience for everything it was worth.
 

When the 1965 Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March arrived in the Alabama capital, five-year-old Wanda Battle was there to see it.
 

When the Gordon Class of 2026 crossed Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge and retraced the march route back to Montgomery, seventy-year-old Wanda Battle was there to meet them. 
 

It had been a long day of learning, but Ms. Battle’s infectious energy and undeniable enthusiasm had the Gordon students up and singing, and even dancing in honor of the three-year-olds of the Peppermint Academy.
 

Gordon first met Wanda Battle when she was tour director at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as minister during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
 

Gordon doesn’t go to Dexter anymore, but we do see Ms. Battle.
 

Part of her charm is that she is clearly living her best life at age seventy, laughing and curtseying and dropping “I love yous” freely and singing Nina Simone songs a cappella.
 

She is funny, she charming, she is energetic, she is smart, but it is her authenticity that grabs Gordon students.
 

She goes in for an earnest connection every time, and does not let anyone off the hook.
 

She’s surprising, and students surprise themselves with the responses she gets out of them.
 

Her train of thought was busy, but it returned repeatedly to the question, “What gets you out of bed in the morning?”
 

It’s a get-to-know-you question.
 

Then an existential one. 
 

Then a challenge.
 

Class of 2026, when you wake up in the morning, Ms. Battle wants you thinking about what makes you special.
 

She wants you thinking about why you are alive.
 

And she wants you thinking about how you are going to use your gifts to make this world a better place.

 

Back to day two

Dozens more photos from day three

More on the Civil Rights Trip