Thomas Bullock - Day 22

The day began with bus loading at 8:30 with Rhodes College as the destination. After listening to a brief introduction of the college done by Russ Williams, we heard from a group of four students. They talked about Crossroads to Freedom, an online digital archive of primary materials from the Civil Rights era. These primary materials include documents, pictures, maps and interviews from a variety of sources with many different perspectives. We also learned how the students work to contribute more to Crossroads; three teams of students work to research important areas in Memphis during the Civil Rights movement, gather stories and interviews for the site, and to increase awareness of Crossroads through social networking and other means. After these students spoke with us, Dr. Jim Lanier, a professor of the college, talked about his own life story. He was born in the Deep South during the 1940s, at a time when segregation was alive, well, and believed in by Dr. Lanier and all of the people he knew. In 1967, he came to Memphis after attending graduate school to teach. He came in the heat of the sanitation workers’ strike and was consequently forced to deal with issues of race first-hand. In time, his perspective of blacks changed, and while he did not march in Selma due to his wife’s pregnancy he joined a march immediately following MLK’s murder. It was inspiring to see how Lanier changed from a racist to a man in the movement even though his own parents did not support him. After we left Rhodes, we went to the National Civil Rights Museum. This Museum housed a vault of knowledge. Even after learning about Civil Rights and activists during the movement for 21 days on this trip, I still was able to fill four pages of my journal with information and stories about important figures that I had never even heard of before. I spent an hour gathering information, and then retired back to the bus for a healthy lunch consisting of pb and j. Afterwards, I ventured back into the museum for another two hours to learn. However, even with all the information the museum held, I was most touched when I looked into room 306 and onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Being so close to the site of Dr. King’s assassination was incredibly moving. Words cannot describe how I felt, so I will not even attempt to search for adequate ones. After we finally left the museum, we enjoyed a dinner of barbeque at Corky’s and ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s. My stomach has yet to recover. We then traveled back to the hotel and practiced speeches, which brings me to the present time, and I am blogging about the day while I wait impatiently for the talent show the Class fivers are about to put on.