“You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.” —Bryan Stevenson (born 1959)
Why plan a civil rights road trip?
Learning shameful history, need not shame us. Living bridges to the past need not awaken White fragility. Instead of wiping out local microhistories, teach how to cope with discomfiting truths. America comes alive in the places where history was made. Plan a trip around civil rights landmarks and Sites of Conscience (www.sitesofconscience.org) where Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities still have the ability to tell their own stories, their own history.
Place-based learning is a powerful tool of resistance against the rewriting of history in the classroom. If taking a trip is out of reach, stay home and armchair travel. Support your local libraries and booksellers. Book banning also denies people the right to tell their stories.