Freedom ride highlights

A unique traveling class will take UW–Madison students to many of the historical sites where they will explore the meanings of the Civil Rights Movement. Stops on the tour include:

• Chicago: Students meet Diane Nash, who in 1961 led a group of student activists to Alabama in order to sustain the Freedom Rides after the initial group of riders encountered mob violence in Birmingham, Ala. Nash and other student freedom riders traveled on buses from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were swiftly arrested and imprisoned. Nash played a key role in other efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Nashville, Tenn.: Students meet Isaac Freeman of the Fairfield Four, who is regarded as one of the finest bass voices in the history of gospel music. The Fairfield Four stands at a crossroads of American experience — that extraordinary juncture rooted in gospel and branching into musical expression ranging from blues to R&B, soul to rock and roll, and beyond. During the 1940s, the Fairfield Four were among the top-ranked gospel quartets.
• Birmingham, Ala.: Students get a taste of the spirit that kept the civil rights movement alive at a church service and evening performance by the Birmingham Freedom Singers at the Body of Christ Deliverance Ministry. Rev. Vernon Tyson, father of professor Tim Tyson and movement veteran, will deliver a sermon followed by a panel discussion with local “foot soldiers” from the Civil Rights Movement.
• Selma, Ala.: Students tour the National Voting Rights Museum and reenact a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge that sparked the Voting Rights Act.
• Hattiesburg, Miss.: UW–Madison students join University of Southern Mississippi students for an afternoon symposium on the 1964 Freedom Summer. Participants include Daisy Harris Wade and her son Anthony Harris, as well as Vernon Dahmer Jr. and his mother. In 1998, Former Ku Klux Klan chieftain Sam Bowers was convicted for the 1966 firebombing death of Vernon Dahmer Sr., a Hattiesburg civil rights figure.
• New Orleans: Students learn about the Deacons for Defense from Black Arts Movement activist, Kalamu Ya Salaam, and take a walking tour of old slave markets with local historian Greg Osborn. They finish the day at the Destrehan Plantation, site of an 1811 slave revolt.
• Oxford, Miss.: On the way to Oxford, students learn about the rich delta blues tradition at the Delta Blues Museum and meet with Memphis music writer and critic John Floyd. Later that day, Square Books will host a symposium where students will meet local civil rights activists including former members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
• Memphis: Students listen to the soul sounds of Al Green at the Full Tabernacle Church, followed by a tour of Soulsville, home of Stax Studio. Stax Records is critical in American music history as one of the most popular soul music record labels ever – second only to Motown in sales and influence, but first in gritty, raw, stripped-down soul music. Stax launched the careers of major pop soul stars Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla & Rufus Thomas, Booker T. & the MGs, and 1970s soul superstar Isaac Hayes.