Fall 2018 Questionnaire |
Introduction
Thank you for your interest in the Fall 2018 pilgrimage.
The concept for a civil rights pilgrimage was conceived in the summer of 2013 and we have learned a great deal along the way. In past months and years we have spent time listening, learning and growing together as the contexts of racial justice have continued to change. We have seen the Black Lives Matter movement emerge through the hard-won lessons and the unfinished business of the civil rights movement. Our deeply divided political environment demands all of our attention and participation in continuing the work started by civil rights leaders. We as a nation are in need of dialogue and understanding and we are fully committed to doing all we can to effect change.
Due to the high demand and interest in the civil rights pilgrimages, participation is a highly selective process. When seating the bus, we seek to include a broad range of individuals with these characteristics in mind:
1. Diversity across racial, age, gender, and economic standings
2. A fundamental desire to study the arc of the Black American freedom struggle
3. A clear, determined commitment to racial and social justice
4. A belief in the value and essentiality of cross-racial relationship-building
5. A collective, full investment in time and commitment
Due to the high demand and interest in the civil rights pilgrimages, participation is a highly selective process. When seating the bus, we seek to include a broad range of individuals with these characteristics in mind:
1. Diversity across racial, age, gender, and economic standings
2. A fundamental desire to study the arc of the Black American freedom struggle
3. A clear, determined commitment to racial and social justice
4. A belief in the value and essentiality of cross-racial relationship-building
5. A collective, full investment in time and commitment
Our experience includes these three key components:
We begin our journey with learning and community building. We come together two times a week for four weeks to build community across differences and educate each other and ourselves on the history and present reality of social injustices in our society. We do this through respectful dialogue, reading and video assignments, meaningful listening, and participatory exercises.
We travel to the American South where we visit key places in the civil rights movement and spend time with foot soldiers who participated in the movement in a variety of ways. Some of the places we have visited include: Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, AL; Oxford and Philadelphia, MS; Nashville and Memphis, TN; and organizations such as the Highlander Research and Education Center, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. We engage in learning about our living history from people who were on the front lines of the struggle during the civil rights movement as well as those who are leading the movements of today.
We believe in an educational model in which every person in our community has the capacity to teach and to learn. We engage in a series of workshops to help us build cross-racial understanding and trust. These workshops occur before our pilgrimage, during our pre-pilgrimage meetings, and after our return home. Some of our previous workshops have been conducted at: The Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, TN; the William Winter Institute at the University of Mississippi; the University of Alabama; and locally facilitated by Dr. Bernard Lafayette – one of the lead organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.