This week’s UW-Eau Claire Civil Rights Pilgrimage (CRP) has moved online and is open to the public as well as to the UW-EC community, thanks to the determination of the students who would have led a bus tour if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t intervened.
A full week of virtual tour events is scheduled for Monday through Friday (Jan. 11-15).
The events are free to UW-EC students, faculty and staff, and are open to the larger community for a $30 fee. Registration can be completed via this link.
The tour of southern sites that are closely tied to the 1960s civil rights movement has been a highlight of the UW-EC calendar for 11 years. It has taken students and faculty through Deep South locations that played important roles in the civil rights struggles, starting in Atlanta, GA and including stops in several Alabama cities as well as in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee.
In a “normal” year, the pilgrimage is offered during the January Winterim period and again during spring break. Last year, the spring break trip was cancelled because of the pandemic and this year’s travel met a similar fate.
Student coordinators persisted
But the student coordinators for this year’s trip, all veterans of earlier trips, felt that the experience was too valuable to skip a year entirely. Destini Wilson, a sophomore Criminal Justice major from Eau Claire, took part in the CRP as a freshman and said she wanted to bring the experience to fellow students.
“I feel that all students should have an opportunity like the CRP, and now that it’s online more students can come,” she said. “My hope is that online participants can take in all the information and use it to try and better their communities, or better their own ways.”
Another student coordinator, Actuarial Science student Ethan Ming Fing Teow of Penang, Malaysia, said he “took the trip in spring of 2019, and it was transformative for the way I think.
“At first it was easy to think about all of the things we were hearing about as history,” he said.” But as we did a lot of reflection during the trip, it was clear that issues that existed in 1965 still do so now, just maybe in a different form.”
He said this year’s planning process tried to incorporate the trip’s “growth elements” into the online format, challenging participants to consider how they will move forward with insights gained from the experience. He said it was important to “focus our planning on making this virtual event as immersive as possible” in order to replicate the learning environment of the actual trips.
Some details
Eighteen separate programs will be part of the virtual tour, which begins at 10 a.m. Monday (Jan. 11) and concludes with a noon program on Friday (Jan. 15). In addition, there will be live discussions led by the student coordinators, at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday (Jan. 12) and 4 p.m. on Friday.
More information on the specific programs is available here.
Many of this week’s sessions will be recorded, so participants can view them at times convenient for them. These sessions are supplemented by a collection of videos, films, articles and virtual tours that can be accessed at any time. All material will remain available through Feb. 4.
Speakers will include Charles Person, the youngest of the original “Freedom Riders,” and Spirit Tawfiq, the daughter of one of the nine students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957 under the protection of the 101st Airborne Division.
Comments from Thesing-Ritter and Hollars
Jodi Thesing-Ritter, founder of the CRP, said she is proud of the passion and initiative shown by her student team who took it upon themselves to make this new incarnation of the CRP a reality.
“I am so pleased that our incredible student coordinators have chosen to work to keep the Civil Rights Pilgrimage tradition going in spite of the pandemic which has sidelined travel for this year,” she said. “Their deep desire to bring this experience to others through the virtual format is a testament to the impact the experience had on their own lives.”
B.J. Hollars, UW-EC associate professor of English, took part in the 2016 CRP and will lead two book discussions as part of this year’s virtual tour. He said he strongly recommends the online experience.
“As someone whose life was fundamentally changed by the Civil Rights Pilgrimage, I know firsthand just how powerful the trip can be,” Hollars said. “I know, too, that it can be difficult for students, alumni and staff to manage 10 days away from their regular lives to experience the pilgrimage in full.
“But this year’s virtual pilgrimage ensures that everyone can have access to this vital experience,” he added. “These stories and this history are more important than ever — everyone should take their seats on this year’s ‘virtual bus.’ The transformative power will still be felt.”
Thesing-Ritter said that the most important aspect “of our typical CRP trips is that absorption and reflection we do as a group — on the bus, up late nights talking.” She added that this year’s effort includes “a plan to virtually tap into that same visceral experience and talk through the crucial question of ‘so now that you know all this, how are you going to use it?’”
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