Owls Visit Selma and Montgomery

Owls traveled to Alabama for an educational tour to wrap up Black History Month. Led by English Department Chair Elizabeth Crosby and History Department Chair Jonathan Jones, the group first stopped at the site where Ell Persons was lynched in 1917 off Summer Avenue near the Wolf River. A marker stands near where the lynching took place. This event led to the formation of the Memphis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Once in Montgomery, the group visited the Legacy Museum, which provides the history of slavery in the United States. They also visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which “is dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.”

Finally, they walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, the site of the “Bloody Sunday” conflict. On March 7, 1965, voting rights marchers were violently confronted by state troopers and county sheriff’s deputies while attempting to make their way to the state capitol in Montgomery.

Crosby and Jones plan to make this an annual trip to help Owls to learn about the history of the Civil Rights Movement.

See photos from the trip HERE.
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