Seahawks Journey To Atlanta And Alabama For A Civil Rights Learning Tour

“I am at this point where I can’t imagine not going,” Wilkins-Mickey mentioned. “Every year I learn something new. Of course they add different experiences everything we go, so it really does feel different every time, but I want to learn. I want to continue to learn. This is our culture, it’s our history and I would like to continue to understand why we are where we are today. And I think the only way to do that is to understand our past. Every time I go, I just feel so inspired. It gives me purpose to do the work that I do.”

The journey begins with a flight from Seattle to Atlanta the place the group has their first glimpse of what to anticipate for the remainder of their week. The group was given a tour of an space of downtown Atlanta known as “Sweet Auburn Ave.” which was as soon as a booming neighborhood and neighborhood, full of companies, that was systemically dismantled by a freeway that was constructed by the neighborhood. Businesses and households had been pressured to depart.

Keenan Allen Ladd, certainly one of three educators on the tour mentioned, “I really just appreciated the educators in those moments, because they take you through the whole story of the major moments that happened in the Civil Rights Movement.”

The remainder of that first day was spent on the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, his beginning residence and different websites in Atlanta earlier than making the drive to the neighboring state of Alabama to go to Anniston, the place the Freedom Riders boarded a bus on the Greyhound station and which was attacked by a gaggle of white supremacist,

The group spent the rest of their journey in several cities in Alabama, together with Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma.

While in Montgomery, the group visited the Montgomery riverfront, a location the place enslaved folks had been introduced off of boats and brought to the town’s downtown space to be auctioned off.

Leann Coates, Seahawks premium service consultant, described the expertise as surprising.

“It’s very powerful to be standing there at the riverfront, and know that not long ago, people were brought on ships and sold. That street is still called commerce street. Things have not changed in the way you think they have changed.”

While the group was in Montgomery, one of many areas they visited was the Legacy Museum, a museum that immerses guests within the historical past of Black Americans from the Transatlantic slave commerce during to current day and mass incarceration.

And whereas the precise tour of the South was simply 5 days, the journey does not cease there. Ladd mentioned he instantly returned to his classroom and considered methods to get his college students concerned and educated on the matters he realized about on the tour. Allen Ladd mentioned he utilized the one factor he is aware of all of his college students use, social media, particularly Tik Tok and Instagram reels, to assist the scholars study data in a pure approach.

“When I got back, I actually had them all take out their phones and go on Tik Tok and look up the Institute for Common Power, just so they could see that experience first-hand. We did that for like two days. By the third day, a lot of their algorithm’s changes and they were able to get real life information that they weren’t getting before.”

He added, “This tour furthers my want, urge and that yearning to make sure I’m standing up for everyone who doesn’t have the opportunity to utilize their voice, to just amplify voices. There’s a lot of people that we’ve learned on this trip, this Truth and Purpose, to utilize your voice for the voice of others. And that’s something that I’m going to do… I’m in a unique position as an educator. I have the opportunity to guide or facilitate youth, and I have an opportunity to open the eyes of our youth and I have something that is precious… I want to make sure they have the correct information. I don’t want to steer them in a particular direction, but I definitely want to put the correct information in front of them, so they can understand what this country looked like previously, to give them a vision of what they believe this country should look like moving forward in the future.”

Plenty of the individuals come away from the journey feeling a way of neighborhood, empowered and are extra enlightened concerning the historical past of Black Americans than they had been earlier than.

Learn more about the Truth and Purpose tour and the organization, the Institute for Common Power, that spearheads this trip here.