Historic civil rights sites now tools for teaching

Focus on pivotal years
The trip focuses on the years 1955 to 1968, said SMU history professor Glenn Linden, who serves as trip historian and leads discussions about the sites and the videos the travelers watch en route.

"We have meetings in the evening and we process it. For a while, some of the white students feel anxious," said Linden. "Some of the black students begin to understand why their parents were trying to protect them and (they understand) what could happen to them in a fairly racist society."

Still, he said the trip is not about guilt.

"You're not blamed if you're white. When the trip is over, we meet and say, `How can we make SMU a better place?' " Linden said.

Another year, another pilgrimage
Next year's pilgrimage itinerary is already being planned and will be different. Finnin said it would put more emphasis on Mississippi and the blues.

"We hope to go to Money, Miss., where many people believe the emotional and cultural trigger for the civil rights movement began with the death of Emmett Till," he said. "We hope to add a stop in Philadelphia, Miss., where Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were killed."

Besides the Southern experience of race relations from slavery and the Civil War through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the 2008 trip will consider some aspects of Hurricane Katrina.

Matlock said the most moving part of the trip was the group's visit to a slavery and Civil War museum, housed in the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma.

She wrote in her journal: "moved to tears as we were treated like slaves."

The group was told not to make eye contact with the museum guide, she said. And when they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge — site of 1965's "Bloody Sunday" march — Matlock wrote, "Oh Lord! The horror, the pain, the courage, the determination, the fights, the victories of a people."

The trip answered many questions, she said.

"Some of the people said it was life changing and I didn't believe it," she said. "But it has changed my life, my outlook, my understanding and my willingness. It kind of puts you more at a peace about yourself."

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