Day two of the 2026 Civil Rights Trip

Montgomery, Alabama is known as the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.
 

It was a major slave trading hub and the home to the first Confederate White House.
 

It was also the site of the 1954 bus boycott, Dr. King’s first mass movement, and the destination of the 1965 Voting Rights March.
 

The history overlaps throughout town.
 

Even boarded up storefronts have historical markers. 
 

Looking east from the corner of Dexter and Commerce, you see a sign honoring Rosa Parks and her famous bus ride.
 

Looking west, you see the fountain where the slave markets were held.

Looking more closely at the fountain, you see the “temporary” 2020 Black Lives Matter mural Michelle Browder painted, the one that didn’t turn out to be so temporary.
 

The Rosa Parks sign doesn’t mention Claudette Colvin. The sign by the fountain doesn’t mention the slave trade. Nothing in sight mentions Michelle Browder.
 

When history is this crowded, who gets to decide what history is temporary and what is permanent?
 

When the Equal Justice Initiative got serious about fighting mass incarceration, they discovered they needed to educate the public about the historical context of modern criminal law.
 

That history is told, in stunning detail, in their Legacy Museum, which Gordon visited this morning, and where photography is prohibited.
 

The museum draws a throughline across US history that centers the Black experience and connects the eras of enslavement, racial terrorism and segregation to the industry of mass incarceration in America today.
 

The Legacy Museum tells this story through a masterful combination of multimedia displays that put scholarship at the center, with photos, source documents, interviews, diaries, news clippings, archival films, ledgers and court records, with every name, county, city, country and date laid bare and inviting fact checking.
 

The resulting history is undeniable.
 

Across town, at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, EJI has taken some almost-forgotten piece of that history and burned it into steel pillars.
 

EJI’s public education work began with research into lynchings and racialized violence, crimes that were often poorly documented when they happened, and which many towns and regions have been eager to forget.
 

Ten years later, the EJI runs the National Memorial, the world’s only memorial to racialized violence.
 

Each metal pillar represents a US county, with names and dates commemorating each documented lynching that took place there.
 

The memorial takes up several city blocks.
 

Research is ongoing, and so is the outreach wing of the memorial: towns and counties can claim a matching pillar to install as their own memorial, as they come to terms with their legacy of violence and connect with the National Memorial in a process of reconciliation.
 

Down the hill from the memorial are signs representing the communities who have entered the process of reconciliation.
 

Every year, when Gordon visits, the patch of signs has grown.
 

Something is working.
 

This history is recorded and on view, here and, increasingly, in the communities where the crimes occurred.
 

The last stop of the day was the Southern Poverty Law Center, where another set of histories is being recorded.
 

The SPLC has an explicit mission of honoring and preserving the history of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, specifically, the stories of forty people who lost their lives in the movement.
 

Their stories are told inside the SPLC, and are carved in marble on a memorial outside.
 

But the SPLC has another, vital mission: documenting and reporting on hate groups and hate crimes across the country, and researching and vigorously litigating injustice in states, counties, cities and small towns across the US, with a special focus on serving those who might not otherwise be able to afford a lawyer.

This is where the history starts to get exciting.
 

This is history we are invited to.
 

This is where Gordon’s students can start to make some history of their own.
 

The SPLC invites visitors to make a simple pledge to find their own way to combat hate, injustice and intolerance.
 

When they’ve signed the pledge, their name shows up on a Wall of Justice.

 

And playing with the interface, the students found ways to display the names of friends, siblings, former teachers and Gordon alumni from years gone by, and mix their own names with those who have come before.
 

All day yesterday, these students met people told them - who demanded! - that they change the world and work for the greater good.
 

Dr. Rice. Dr. Rice’s colleagues and students. Herb Brown. Michelle Browder. Her brother Steven.
 

Doctors. Philosophers. Math majors. Motor coach drivers. Artists, educators and entrepreneurs.
 

And today, they’ve been cut loose to study this history and start to imagine their place in it.
 

Today, in a series of debriefs with their teachers, the students were a little unsteady about the specifics of how they will change they world.
 

But they know they need to.
 

They know they want to.
 

And they see it is possible.

 

Back to day one

Ahead to day three

Dozens more photos from day two

More on the Civil Rights Trip