Africatown, Alabama
After departing on Saturday, June 15, the Fellows arrived in Africatown, Alabama, the location of a descendant community from the last ship that illegally imported slaves in 1860. (The community is featured on a Netflix documentary, Descendant.) The high point of their visit to Africatown was the major contribution they made to the community’s current project of mapping, recording and preserving the community’s cemetery, which had fallen into disrepair due to weather and neglect. In 95-degree heat, the Fellows measured and researched 94 graves, and entered the resulting information about the graves’ locations, conditions, and occupants into a data system to help members of the community find their family members. The information they gathered also will help the community obtain funding to preserve the cemetery. While they were recording gravesites, the Fellows pulled weeds to clean up the gravesites. Their social justice work in Africatown included helping build butterfly houses to increase the number of pollinators in the ecosystem, helping strengthen the health of the overall environment.
The Fellows had been trained in cemetery mapping several weeks ago by Dr. Alexandra Jones, Executive Director of Archaeology in the Community, at the Mt. Zion Lady’s Band Cemetery in Georgetown, where again, the disinvestment and environmental injustices were evident. The treatment of the graves of African Americans demonstrated to the Fellows the inequitable treatment of minorities, even in death.
The Fellows’ work in the Africatown Plateau Cemetery was featured on the Good Day Gold Coast local news show in Alabama. While in Africatown, the Fellows also attended a Sunday Baptist church service – with excellent music – and took a tour of Africatown with Dr. Major Joe Womack, a community environmental justice expert. Major Womack took students to historic sections of Africatown that no longer exist due to the rezoning of land that resulted in displacement of community members. Commercial development of International Paper, Kimberly Clark, and oil companies threaten Africatown’s physical and environmental health, cultural heritage, education and economic wellness.
Selma, Alabama
On Tuesday, the students visited the National Voting Rights museum in Selma, continuing their education about this important civil right that had been sparked by the presentation earlier this year by DC-based voting rights advocate Bruce Spiva. Students walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge — always a highpoint of the Summer Journey — and then visited Brown Chapel–AME Church with Linda Holmes, who marched on Bloody Sunday when she was 11 years old; she led the Fellows in singing Freedom songs.
Montgomery, Alabama
In Montgomery, the Fellows visited the Freedom Riders museum and spoke to Dr. Bernard Lafayette, a Freedom Rider now in his 80s, who was 21 years old when he was arrested and jailed in Jackson, MS, in the second wave of students who came to fill in for Freedom Riders. Dr. Lafayette recounted that the students turned their jail cells into a school, teaching each other about what they were currently learning in school. And they kept singing Freedom Songs in jail, a tradition he shared in singing with our Fellows.
Continuing in Montgomery, the Fellows visited the house of Dr. Richard Harris, a pharmacist who lived two doors down from the home of Dr. King, and housed the Freedom Riders. When John Lewis was clubbed during the march on Bloody Sunday, Dr. Harris treated him. The tour showed in great detail the measures Dr. Harris employed to protect and feed the Freedom Riders during their stay.
On Wednesday, the Fellows visited the Equal Justice Initiative and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The Fellows were extremely moved by the series of rooms showing the history of slavery, reconstruction, lynching and mass incarceration, using sculpture, audio, data, and symbolism to reflect these experiences. The accompanying National Peace and Justice Memorial presents the number and locations of lynchings through stone boxes that identify all known lynching victims in each county.
Following a bus tour of Montgomery, the students visited the Mothers of Gynecology sculpture by Michelle Browder which pays homage to three woman who the so-called Father of Gynecology experimented on and abused through experimental surgeries.
Birmingham, Alabama
In Birmingham on Thursday, the Fellows toured the 16th Street Baptist Church, where a bombing killed four young girls. The bombing of the 16th Baptist Church was sadly discussed as a turning point in the fight for civil rights for the people of Birmingham. Students also toured the Kelly Ingram Park, a memorial to Birmingham’s civil rights history. In the afternoon, students visited the Invisible Histories Project, an archive of queer artifacts and information for the Southern states. The purpose of the archives was to keep these collections available and local to the South. The fellows enjoyed trying on a crown worn by a 70s drag queen.
| Also in Birmingham, the fellows received a presentation about environmental justice, presented by Professor Roald Hazelhoff, who ran the environmental education center at the University of Southern Birmingham. Professor Hazelhoff has 20 projects throughout Alabama, teaching people about environmental justice work and climate change, and he worked on preserving local rivers and endangered species. Among other things, the Fellows learned from him that the average family of four accumulates 6 ½ pound of garbage each day; and that you should never buy number 3 or 4 plastics, since they never disintegrate. Professor Hazelhoff is also working with students at Africatown’s Rosenwald school to create medicinal gardens and a biosphere to protect the land from further environmental harms. The following day, Professor Hazelhoff also took the fellows on a tour through the local botanical gardens. |
The Fellows’ social justice education includes exposure to a wide variety of historical and current sites and movements. Much of what the students are seeing can be personally affecting, and the trip leaders are spending a great deal of time helping the Fellows process the information and protect themselves against trauma based on these experiences. We expect that the students will return from the trip with a much broader base of knowledge and experience to draw on in their future activism in pursuit of social justice.
On to Memphis, Wilmington, and Farmville!
