Save the Date for the 2019 Alabama Living Legacy Pilgrimage - March 20-24, 2019March 20-24, 2019, we'll be traveling to Alabama for a four-day Living Legacy Pilgrimage. We'll gather in Birmingham and visit the historic 16th Street Baptist Church, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth's Bethel Baptist Church, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. From there, we'll travel to Marion, Alabama, where Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed by a state police officer, and the idea for the Selma to Montgomery March was born as mourners considered marching Jimmie Lee's body to the state capitol in Montgomery.
We'll visit Selma, where Bloody Sunday, Turn-around Tuesday, the death of Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb, and finally the successful Selma to Montgomery March changed the course of history, although not before another Unitarian Universalist, Viola Liuzzo died at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. In Montgomery, we'll visit Maya Lin's Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center. We'll see where The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led his congregation and where the Selma to Montgomery March ended at the steps of the Alabama State Capitol building, and where Mrs. Rosa Parks chose to sit on a bus sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the most effective boycotts ever instigated. We'll end our Pilgrimage with a visit to the newly opened Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, otherwise known as the Lynching Memorial. Registration will open soon! Registration is open for the 2018 Mississippi Pilgrimage - October 28 through October 31Join us for this four-day Pilgrimage to key Civil Rights Movement sites in Mississippi, October 28 through October 31, 2018.This affordable experience will include, among other stops, the site where three Civil Rights workers disappeared, Medgar Evers home, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, the Mississippi Delta where Fannie Lou Hamer lived and died, and the area where young Emmett Till was killed. Learn more and register today.
What is the Living Legacy Project?The Living Legacy Project grew out of the Reverend Gordon Gibson's and his wife Judy's passion for sharing the Civil Rights Movement story. Recognizing the importance of not only capturing this story, and our Unitarian Universalist role in it, but of understanding what this story teaches us about the continued work that still needs to be done, the Reverend Hope Johnson, Janice Marie Johnson, and Annette Marquis formed a partnership with Gordon and Judy, to establish the Living Legacy Project. In November of 2013, the founding members, along with singer/songwriter Reggie Harris, formed the Living Legacy Project Board, with a goal of developing long-range sustainability in service of our mission.
Today, we offer the Living Legacy Pilgrimage and other experiential learning opportunities to deepen understanding of the Civil Rights Movement by visiting the sites where it happened and talking with the people who lived it. More about the Living Legacy Project and its leaders 
Staff of the 2018 Alabama Living Legacy Pilgrimage. From L to R first row: Dr. Janice Marie Johnson, Clarence Jones, Rev. Dr. Hope Johnson, and Rev. Dr. Gordon Gibson, Second row: Joseph Selmon, Matt Watroba, and Annette Marquis
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The Living Legacy Project welcomes you. If you're interested in future programs, please add your name to our mailing list.
2014 Living Legacy Pilgrimage at 16th St. Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
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Organizers of Marching in the Arc of Justice: A Conference to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign
Staff of the 2017 Living Legacy Pilgrimage at the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial in Ruleville, Mississippi: John Harris, Joseph Selmon, Clarence Jones, Rev. James A Hobart, Reggie Harris, and Annette Marquis
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If you have questions about the Living Legacy Project, please contact livinglegacypilgrimage@gmail.com.