The 400 middle schoolers from the DuBois Integrity Academy who took an October field trip found themselves traveling beyond the Riverdale school and into the path of history.
The long day began in the pre-dawn hours as a caravan of 14 charter buses left for Selma, Alabama. For a month before, students had researched the significance of the events that took place there during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Their goal: to walk in the steps of those who were tear-gassed and beaten as they crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge in March 1965.
“We wanted to give our children that exposure to the Civil Rights movement and the importance of voting and education that was part of that,” said Craig Cason, the school’s executive director who founded the academy in 2015.
Cason had been thinking about the long day trip prior to the pandemic but had to put those plans on hold. This year, he was committed to making it happen. Lessons around the historic event were woven into the curriculum, and students created a website to showcase what they’d learned. Grandparents and a son of an original Pettus bridge marcher visited the school and talked about that era of change and how it affected them.
“The kids were really into what they had to say,” said Cason.
Students also ran a four-day fundraiser selling gourmet popcorn that netted $77,000 to pay for the trip and hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with the school’s logo.
In Selma, the visitors were greeted by Mayor James Perkins Jr. who emphasized the town’s historic nature and the how the events of 1965 paved the way for his becoming the city’s first Black mayor. He also told them it was the first time the city had hosted a school group to walk the bridge.
“He provided background from the city’s role in the Civil War to the freedoms now afforded to people of color, from the right to eat in a restaurant to voting,” said Cason.
As students headed across the bridge, Principal Stephanie Payne said some were afraid.
“They didn’t know what was going to happen, and I heard some say they were scared,” she said. “They’d seen the videos. And the bridge wasn’t closed down; we were on one side, but the other had cars and people on it. I had to explain that because of what happened then, we could do this peacefully now without being attacked or having dogs sic’d on us. They really felt the impact of what happened, and I was touched by that.”
The trip, a first for many students who had never left the county or state, also included a stop at Tuskegee University to see planes flown by the school’s famous airmen and a lunch hosted by Alabama State University. The long day ended with students’ having a new outlook, said Cason.
“There’s a little bit more sense of pride and seriousness about what we’re doing in this school,” he said. “It’s created long-lasting effects for the whole year and really brought the whole community together.”
Information about DuBois Integrity Academy is online at duboisintegrityacademy.org.
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