A group of Marin students will travel to Alabama this month to explore civil rights history.
The five-day trip, which is hosted by a social justice program for the Marin City youth advocacy group Performing Stars, will take eight high school students, four college students and adult chaperones on an expansive and immersive civil rights tour of the South.
“We want them to come out and be the new social justice leaders,” said Felecia Gaston, CEO of Performing Stars. “What better way to do that where it all began.”
The trip will begin in Montgomery, Alabama on Tuesday. The students will visit seminal civil rights locations such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; the National Voting Rights Museum, and the Rosa Parks Museum. The students will return on Friday.
Voting rights will be a particular focus, said Gaston. One early stop will be the Lowndes Interpretive Center, a museum dedicated to the famed march from Selma to Montgomery advocating for the right to vote. The march, which featured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is credited with bringing awareness to prejudice against Black residents in the South and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act.
“My goal is these young people take what they learn and bring it back here,” Gaston said. “It’s more critical in this day and time because of what’s happening nationally in our country. We need to encourage other young people to get on board.”
The trip will additionally make stops in Lowndes County for a lesson on the founding of the Black Panther Party; The Legacy Museum in Montgomery for a lesson on the impact of slavery and the historically Black college Tuskegee University.
Gaston said the students plan to document the trip using skills taught to them through a workshop by the Community Media Center of Marin. The video will likely be shared publicly in order to educate the public and reflect on the lessons of the trip, Gaston said.
Gaston said this is the second trip to Alabama taken with Performing Stars students. The last trip, held in 2018, was also sponsored by the TomKat Foundation, a San-Francisco based philanthropy group.
Antanasia Cook, a 17-year-old at Tamalpais High School, said she had never been to the South. She hoped the exposure to an in-person civil rights history lesson would develop her perspective on social issues in Marin.
“I want to learn the rich history of the civil rights movement,” Cook said. “Even though you might think it’s 2023 and it’s Marin County and you might not see these things, I definitely still see it.”
Siyon Farin, 20 of San Rafael, grew up in Marin City and attends Sonoma State University. This will be his first time traveling out of state.
“Going to Alabama and learning about the roots of the civil rights movement, from where it started, that will be the best opportunity for me,” he said.
