Civil Rights Immersion - Episode1

In July 2023, a group of clergy and laity from the Great Plains Conference met up with fellow United Methodists from the Louisiana Conference for a civil rights immersion experience. Over the course of four days, the group lived the history of Alabama.

Our group spent much of its time in Montgomery. We saw the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and walked in the parsonage where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King lived. We spent the better part of a day at the Legacy Museum, a mission of the Equal Justice Initiative (or EJI). It’s an amazing museum that uses the latest in technology to help tell the story of racism — from kidnappings in the African continent to the often-deadly voyage to North America to the brutality of slavery. It also explains the injustice of Jim Crow laws and addresses the modern-day inequity of mass incarceration.

Our group saw the bus station where Freedom Riders were beaten, walked a memorial dedicated to honoring the lives of the numerous people lynched over the years, including right here in Kansas and Nebraska.

We traveled to Selma and walked the bridge where Dr. King, John Lewis and others were abused by white supremacists, including police officers.

In Birmingham, we talked with people who are members of 16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls were killed by a bomb. And we toured the Civil Rights Institute, which tells the story, decade by decade, of the push for equity in this country.

February is Black History Month, so I wanted to share some of the stories from our trip. I wanted to provide an opportunity for listeners to feel the emotions, embrace the potential for change in our country by hearing the stories of people — Black, brown and white.

And, in this concluding episode of the three-part series, I wanted to convey the ways people believe they have changed — And their hopes and dreams for how our world can change … for the better.