February 26, 2019
St. John’s University students recently traveled to Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery, AL, as well as to Atlanta, GA, for a weeklong Journey for Justice immersion in the civil rights movement and an in-depth view of the nation’s history of racial strife and brutality.
Students visited museums and other institutions dedicated to documenting the horrors endured by slaves and the events of the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, and up to the present day. They learned about the rise of the Jim Crow south and the lynchings, bombings, marches, and demonstrations that helped fuel the movement. The students also engaged with people who either served on the front lines of achieving racial justice and equality or possessed a strong knowledge of civil rights events.
“The trip changed my view of civil rights and racial violence in the United States because it taught me how prevalent these problems remain in our society,” said Amanda DeLisi, a junior majoring in History.
Amanda was one of 20 students who applied for and were selected to participate in the University’s first-ever Journey for Justice, which took place January 12–18. The students represented all of St. John’s schools and colleges, as well as a broad spectrum of majors that included the sciences, business, education, and criminal justice.
The trip was sponsored by St. John’s Campus Ministry, the Office of the Provost, and the Division of Student Affairs. Accompanying students on the trip were Angela Seegel, Ed.D., Director of Vincentian Service, Leadership, and Social Justice, Campus Ministry; Joanne M. Carroll, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences; and Robert Bland, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, History, St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Carroll originally proposed the trip when she first learned about the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the Peace and Justice Memorial, dedicated to the memory of the victims of lynching and racial violence. Opened to the public on April 26, 2018, the Legacy Museum is located on a site in Montgomery where slaves were once warehoused. It is one block away from one of the most prominent slave auction blocks in the US and is steps away from an Alabama dock and rail station where tens of thousands of black people were trafficked during the 19th century. The Legacy Museum also uses unique technology to trace the evolution of racial lynchings, legalized racial segregation, racial hierarchy, and mass incarceration in America.
“When this museum opened,” said Dr. Carroll, “I knew right away that I wanted to go. I wanted our students to experience it in the hopes it would expand their understanding of our history and strengthen their activism for social justice.”
Dr. Seegel quickly offered the support of Campus Ministry. “We want students to leave St. John’s knowing we provided them with an experience that will make them better people, make them want to be different for the good of the world—and that is why this trip needs to be continued for future students.”
Dr. Bland, a historian of the African American experience, with an emphasis on the place of the post-Civil War era in black memory, said the trip was intended to propel the Civil Rights Movement out of the history books and directly into the lives of the students.
You have to go back to where all of these things began. The trip was a very excellent way for us to visit sacred ground and to be in the space, and wrestle with it, and come back home with a different set of eyes through which to view this history,” he said.
“It is one thing to see a picture of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It is an entirely different experience to walk across it,” added Dr. Bland, referring to the site in Selma of the Bloody Sunday conflict on March 7, 1965, when armed police officers attacked and beat Civil Rights Movement demonstrators, who were led by Dr. King, as they attempted to march to the state capital in Montgomery. The 54-mile trek is credited with accelerating the enactment later that year of the Voting Rights Act.
The St. John’s students conducted their own walk across the Pettus Bridge, an experience that freshman Joliz Claudio, who majors in Legal Studies in St. John’s College of Professional Studies, said had a profound effect on her. “I had to call my mother to let her know I was walking somewhere near where Dr. King walked during his march over the bridge. It brought tears to my eyes,” Joliz said.
Amanda said she was especially struck by the visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the museum’s dedication to memorializing the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by white supremacists that killed four African American girls.
Noting the church is located within sight of the museum, Amanda said, “I was looking at one of the exhibits where I’m staring at the faces of the men who committed this horrible act, and then, I turn around and see the church, which is just across the street, through a window. That had an extremely emotional impact because I realized that the bombing only happened a few yards away from where I was standing. It also made me confront that awful past and realize that it was not such a long time ago when the bombing took place.”
Journey to Justice included a visit to The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, established in 1968 by Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, as a tribute to her slain husband’s civil rights mission.
The trip culminated with a special dinner arranged in Montgomery by the Resurrection Catholic Missions of the South, Inc., to give the St. John’s group the opportunity to meet and interact with civil rights leaders of the past and present. Nelson Malden, a civil rights activist of the 1950s and Dr. King’s barber, were among the guests.
Nia E. Hulse, a doctoral student in The School of Education at St. John’s, invoked Mr. Malden’s name when she described the tremendous impact of the trip on her life. “Meeting and hugging Dr. King’s barber solidified a call to action for me. This trip helped me to realize the connections between the fight for civil rights in the past to the fight for equality in our society today. My view of civil rights has changed for the better.”
“I am now more optimistic about the future, knowing that countless numbers of people, from many cultural backgrounds, sacrificed their lives on behalf of the struggle in hopes of a better tomorrow,” Nia said. “It forced me to realize that their sacrifice should inspire the next generation to continue this work.”