MARTIN, Tenn. – The Weakley County Reconciliation Project (WCRP) took a group to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, to visit several historical sites March 25-27.
This trip was attended by Dr. Henri Giles, assistant professor of African American studies at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and four UT Martin students: Mason Brinkley, a senior history major from Union City; Alexis Millsaps, a graduate student in mass media and strategic communication from Martin; Kristian Reid, a freshman environmental and organismal biology major from Brownsville; and Sha’Keva Williams, a senior health and human performance major from Memphis.
Giles said that the students gained valuable insight to the processes that allowed enslavement to happen.
This year’s trip to Alabama included stops at the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park and the Rosa Parks Museum. The first day began with a bus tour of Selma.
“The way the museum is set up, it causes you to come face-to-face with the Middle Passage and how Africans were kidnapped and brought to this country and put into the system of enslavement,” Giles said. “It’s very powerful, and I don’t think the students were expecting to see the imagery and the number of oral narratives.”
Giles was most impressed with the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, showcasing art based on the enslavement of Africans and the Reconstruction era. She said there was so much to see, and wished she could have spent a whole day there.
Giles said that experiences like these trips to Alabama can give people the information and understanding to have difficult discussions about this country’s history.
“It allows people to have those discussions that can sometimes make people nervous or don’t feel comfortable talking about,” she said. “For some people, when you bring up the topic of race, it will evoke a number of emotions, and typically, it’s something that people don’t willfully talk about.”
The Weakley County Reconciliation Project is a group of Weakley County citizens who want to engage with their community members and organizations in an open dialogue on matters of race, racism and social injustice.
For more information about the Weakley County Reparation Project, visit its page on Facebook.
Photo – WCRP – Shown in front of the legacy museum in Montgomery, Alabama, members of the WCRP group who went on the trip were (front row, from left) Kristian Reid, Sha’Keva Williams, Dr. Henrietta Giles, the Rev. Amanda Crice, Mason Brinkley, (middle row, from left) Dr. Heidi Huse, Lucy Boykin, Renee Anderson, Nichole Claybrooks, Alexis Millsaps, (back row, from left) Joyce Washington and Teresa Sadler.