September 6, 2018
MPA students explore civil rights and social justice on “This Land is Your Land” summer trip.
Most summer road trips don’t include Topeka, Kansas. But the city made the itinerary of “This Land is Your Land,” a civil rights-focused trip organized by Mounds Park Academy history teachers Katie Murr and Mike Vergin.
“Our goal was to visit as many major sites associated with the civil rights movement as we could,” said Murr. “We wanted them to see places that are an important part of their history but they might fly over instead of visit.”
In the end, Murr and Vergin led 21 students on an unforgettable 12-day trip across 13 states. They traveled more than 3,500 miles, reaching as far south as Montgomery, Alabama and as far east as Atlanta, Georgia. While they focused on civil rights landmarks, they covered all aspects of history as they went. Each site sparked insightful conversations among the students, the teachers, parent chaperones, and bus driver Gary Schlotfeldt.
“As we visited these major historical sites, we had lots of good conversations, particularly around how change is achieved by people outside of the political realm,” said Murr. “We also explored how many civil rights injustices continue today, but in different forms such as the mass incarceration of black men.”
Experiencing the Selma-to-Montgomery march
One of the trip’s most emotionally draining days started in Clanton, Ala. at a Holiday Inn Express. After breakfast, the group drove 45 miles to the Selma Interpretive Center, a U.S. National Park Service-run center with photos, films and a re-creation of the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. A day earlier—during a particularly long stretch of driving—the students had watched the 2014 movie Selma, one of several historical dramas and documentaries they watched on the trip.
The Selma Interpretive Center is adjacent to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Pettus was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, a U.S. Senator from Alabama, and a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. (See NPR’s The Racist History Behind the Iconic Selma Bridge.) As the protesters did more than 50 years ago, the students and accompanying adults walked across the bridge, acknowledging and appreciating the symbolism that a landmark civil rights demonstration traversed a structure named for a man who embodied the injustice, intolerance and violence they were protesting.
After learning about the bridge in U.S. History, and then watching Selma on the trip, “Walking the same route as civil rights heroes was immensely powerful,” said MPA senior Lindsay Baldwin. “We saw the landscape that they saw, and I could almost picture the mob of hostile white Americans that awaited them on the other side. Walking in the footsteps of iconic advocates was humbling and inspiring. All of the students left the bridge with a greater respect and appreciation for the strength and bravery of the marchers.”
Exploring new and powerful account of racial injustice
The group then headed to the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which opened April 26, 2018. Created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), the Legacy Museum is the physical manifestation of the organization’s extensive research into the history of racial injustice. It is built on the site of a former warehouse that imprisoned enslaved black people.
According to its website, “The Legacy Museum employs unique technology to dramatize the enslavement of African Americans, the evolution of racial terror lynchings, legalized racial segregation and racial hierarchy in America. Relying on rarely seen first-person accounts of the domestic slave trade, EJI’s critically acclaimed research materials, videography, exhibits on lynching and recently composed content on segregation, this 11,000-square-foot museum explores the history of racial inequality and its relationship to a range of contemporary issues from mass incarceration to police violence.”
EJI Founder and Executive Director Bryan Stevenson is “a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned.” He is also the author of Just Mercy, a memoir about his current work to provide a full defense for individuals who did not initially receive adequate legal representation when convicted of crimes and were sentenced to life in prison or death. At the start of the trip, one of the MPA students was reading the book; by the end, many had chosen to download the book or wait for the increasingly worn copy to land in their hands.
Honoring victims of lynching at new memorial
The group then headed to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is a 16-minute walk from the Legacy Museum and opened on the same day as the latter. According to its website, it “is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.” (See The New York Times article, A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It.)
As a history teacher, Murr has seen countless memorials. But she found this one particularly powerful and amazing.
“When you approach the memorial, you see the steel columns from a distance,” said Murr. “But when you’re standing alongside them, you’re compelled to read the names and dates of racial lynchings. Many are marked as ‘unknown.’ As you progress into the memorial, the columns rise above you, until you’re at the center of the memorial, forcing you to look at your own responsibility—the role you play—in race relations today.”
That day, the group spent time in downtown Montgomery, stopping at the Civil Rights Memorial, the Alabama State Capitol, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and the First White House of the Confederacy. After an intense and emotionally draining afternoon, the group headed to dinner at Peach Park in Clanton, Alabama. The family-owned restaurant started as a small, roadside fruit stand, and today is a must-see stop for Interstate 65 travelers. Peach Park spreads across seven acres and ended up being a perfect place for the group to recharge. Many of the students—and adults—enjoyed the restaurant’s famous homemade peach ice cream, which they report is worth the hype.
And this was just one day of the 12-day trip!
Building the itinerary for ‘This Land is Your Land’
Over the course of her 14-year tenure at MPA, Murr has led all different types of student trips to locations across the country and globe. Given the current socio-political climate, Murr started thinking two years ago about a civil rights-focused trip. Turns out Vergin was considering the same idea. So the two MPA veteran teachers (Vergin has been teaching at MPA for 20 years) collaborated and mapped out the trip.
Typically when teachers plan a school trip, they employ commercially available tours and resources. They decide where they want to go, identify a readily available itinerary, select a tour company, and go. But this wasn’t the case with “This Land is Your Land.” Murr and Vergin spent months building the itinerary. They needed to identify and book hotel rooms, make large-group reservations at restaurants, reserve tickets at key sites, and secure a bus and driver. (See below for the lists of historical and cultural sites.)
Schlotfeldt was an unexpected benefit of their grassroots trip-planning effort. Murr said that he essentially joined the trip, engaging with the students and becoming part of the family. Schlotfeldt, who is 20+ years older than Murr and Vergin, offered another perspective and felt a sense of responsibility and purpose. After the trip, he called the school to share what an amazing experience it was for him and how incredible MPA students and faculty were.
As Murr and Vergin were planning their trip, examples of civil rights travel and tourism were developing around the 50th anniversaries of key events such as the Selma march and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Their passion for social justice and history combined with the flexibility that MPA affords its teachers helped create a moving and memorable trip for all involved, from the students to the parents.
Reflecting on a transformational experience
“The trip was a learning odyssey through the darkest and brightest parts of American history,” said parent Kofi Bruce. “We saw the breadth of our American experience from Eisenhower’s library and memorial that embodied the greatest generation of WWII and worked our way to some of the darkest times with the Legacy Museum, lynching memorial and Memphis motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. As I watched the students learning the historical context and current realities of the civil rights movement, I found myself remembering that as Americans, we don’t need America to be perfect to love it perfectly.”
Bruce was impressed that so many students would give up two weeks of summer vacation for a full immersion into U.S. history, specifically civil rights history. He found it “remarkable” that MPA would facilitate a trip like this, calling it a “transformational experience.”
For Murr and Vergin, it’s just what they do.
“At MPA, we teach students to dream big and do right, and this trip aligns well with that concept,” said Murr. “This idea of traveling for a larger purpose—and not just for personal growth—reflects how we’re guiding students to examine their place in the world both now and in the future. We want students to see how their passions and interests can help improve and shape the broader world around them.”
Over the course of the trip, the group visited six presidential libraries. But the presidents and their actions faded away on this trip, Murr observed. Instead individuals deciding to make change and working together to achieve that change made the lasting impression.
This Land is Your Land
13 states, 12 days, and 3599 miles
American Jazz Museum
Negro League Baseball Museum
Brown v. Board National Historic Site
Kansas State Capitol
Equality House
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Home
Money Museum – Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
National World War I Museum
Harry S. Truman National Historic Site
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum
Walmart Museum
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Fort Smith National Historic Site
Hot Springs National Park
Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Graceland – The Home of Elvis Presley
National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel
Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail
Legacy Museum – From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
Freedom Riders National Monument
Stone Mountain Theme Park
Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum
World of Coca-Cola
Georgia Aquarium
Rock City
Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage
Cahokia Mounds – UNESCO World Heritage Site
Gateway Arch National Park
Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site
Lincoln Home National Historic Site
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
