I was a participant in the November, 2016 Living Legacy Pilgrimage that began and ended in Memphis and visited locations in Mississippi and Alabama. I heard about the trip from two friends who had taken an earlier trip and deciding to go resulted in an amazing heartfelt experience.

Our group and staff of six shared an intense 8 days of immersing ourselves in the Civil Rights sites and history of the African American struggles for voting rights and equal rights and was concentrated in the early 1960's. We visited sites I knew about and many I had not. We spent our days listening to a variety of speakers sharing their stories of that time, singing songs of the Movement and learning the importance of music in the struggle, watching pertinent films and relating our reading to what we were seeing.

I learned of the importance of the many powerful black women during that time and also of the religious leaders of many faiths, white people who assisted, and the amazing perseverance and incredible courage of working black people. We learned how this relates to the state of racism in the U.S today and the need for all races to know this history.

Many, many times I was deeply moved as I visited sites and learned of what people did during those times. To visit a grave where a hero I had not heard of was buried, to see the driveway of a regular neighborhood where Medgar Evers was killed, to visit the campus of the University of Mississippi, or to see the ruined store where Emmett Till at 14 was "too friendly" with a white woman and then beaten to death brought the experience of the Civil Rights to a searing of the soul.

The trip began at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and after we parted, I returned. It was a fitting beginning and ending.

The entire experience was well planned and the days were very full. Our group melded well and we all interacted. The staff was impeccable in knowledge and well organized. They are passionate about this subject and the intense need for social justice. We all left believing - that this history needs to be known and - committed to working to use our knowledge to good purpose.

I highly recommend the Living Legacy Project with its stellar staff. I have encouraged everyone I know to simply Go!

It was an incredibly meaningful experience for me.

Barbara Sletten
November 2016 Living Legacy Pilgrimage
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The 2016 Living Legacy Pilgrimage gathered in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 9, 2016, just four days after the US presidential election. It was important for all of us on the bus to focus on stories of resilience - to learn how activists in the Civil Rights Movement kept going when all seemed lost. Read the stories that mattered to people who traveled in November in "Stories of Resilience" from the 2016 Living Legacy Pilgrimage. 

In eleven days, forty-five people will gather in Birmingham for the start of the 2013 Living Legacy Pilgrimage. The staff has been preparing for almost a full year, deciding the route, making hotel reservations, planning the program, contacting resource people, updating the website, taking reservations, and having faith that enough people would be interested in immersing themselves in the civil rights movement journey.

The staff can't wait!

Every time we take this trip -- for some of the staff, it is their eight or ninth journey -- we experience something new. This journey is all about grounding ourselves in building a better world. It's learning from those who stood against forces much greater than themselves and proved that nothing is more powerful than justice.  

We hope you'll ride along with us as we travel from Birmingham to Marion, Selma and Montgomery, Alabama and then on to Meridian, Philadelphia, Jackson, Greenwood, Money, Ruleville, Oxford, Mississippi, and then back to Birmingham. Even if it's from your desk chair, learning about the civil rights movement and being inspired by the stories of the people who changed history will make a difference in your life and ultimately the world around you.

We hope you'll come along with us.

By the Rev. Dawn Cooley
Today is day 7 of the UU Living Legacy Pilgrimage. And today, I am thinking about the women of the civil rights movement, and the various roles women played.

I would guess that Rosa Parks is the first woman most people think of when they think of women in the civil rights movement. Her courageous seated protest on the Montgomery bus inspired much that came after.  More...

By the Rev. Dawn Cooley

Today was day 6 of the UU Living Legacy Civil Rights Pilgrimage. And boy, at this point I can barely remember what day it was and which towns we visited. Living out of a suitcase has gotten old. I am a bus-riding expert. I long for my family, my bed, my routine. And I hate all these unsolved (or long delayed) cases of murder or assassination (We visited the Medgar Evers House Museum today…more on that in another post I suspect. I will leave it that he was an amazing man whom most of us should know a lot more about.)  More...

The Rev. Susan Karlson wrote this prose after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge with our group on the Pilgrimage:

"Crossing Over"

I walked the "Bridge" today
over the most beautiful flowing river,
under the most beneficent blue skies.
Together in pairs,
we walked--
silently, prayerfully.
We crossed the bridge,
imagining a different blue sea below--
a sea of blue deputies
with clubs, tear gas,
on horseback--
there to greet the marchers. 

More...

By the Rev. Dawn Cooley
This morning started with a trip to the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL. This powerful monument, created by Maya Lin (creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC), has the names of 40 people (black and white) who were killed from 1955 to 1968 in the South in civil rights related murders.

While we were there, Morris Dees came and spoke to us about the important work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the different efforts they are focusing on right now. One that he mentioned was the school-to-prison-pipeline. Remember that, because I will come back to it. More...

By John Blevins
On Monday, Oct 8th, the Pilgrimage group met with several civil rights activists in Marion, Perry County, Alabama. Willie Nell Avery, chief election commissioner in Marion was one of them. She fascinated us with tales from her work. She reported that she had just recently discovered, almost by accident, that “many” voters had been struck from her voter rolls, without announcement. She is now in the process of trying to figure out the full scope of the problem. Fascinatingly, she told us that one company or agency (I think it was ESS, but I need to do more research on this) does all the voter registration processing for the whole country. I find it frightening to think that other registrars may not be as diligent as Ms. Avery. Who knows what may have happened in other jurisdictions. Is this an isolated incident? A new book by investigator Greg Palast, “Billionaires and Ballot Busters” suggests it may not be. I just ordered my copy.