Traveling course to examine Freedom Rides

This spring marks the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, a direct-action campaign organized by the Congress of Racial Equality to challenge segregation in interstate travel and expose the glaring indignities and injustice of Jim Crow.

In a unique class offered during the three-week summer intersession, UW–Madison students will explore the historical meanings of the Civil Rights Movement on a different kind of journey.

“Freedom Ride: The Sites and Sounds of the Civil Rights Movement” catalogued as Afro-American Studies 671, will be held May 29-June 14.

With the bus as a rolling classroom, professors Tim Tyson, Craig Werner and Steve Kantrowitz will use music, film, literature, and history to help students understand the themes that have shaped democratic possibility over the past century, including race, gender, social class, grassroots community organizing, and non-violent direct action.

The itinerary includes stops in cities and small communities throughout the South where students will have the opportunity to meet with the local people who made the movement a reality, engage in discussion and critical reflection with faculty and students from universities across the South, and visit historical sites. Students will begin and end their trip in Wisconsin, studying the freedom struggle in Madison and Milwaukee.

Cities on the tour include: Nashville, Memphis, and Highlander Folk School in New Market, Tenn.; Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, Ala.; Hattiesburg, Jackson, Clarksdale, and Oxford, Miss.; and New Orleans, La.

The course begins with three days of classroom work before departure Friday, June 1. Upon return, the students will share personal and academic experiences in a campuswide forum, “Freedom Then and Freedom Now.”

“This trip will offer students a chance to seriously grapple with our complicated racial realities,” says Danielle McGuire, a co-organizer of the trip. “They’ll be able to immerse themselves in new and sometimes uncomfortable environments, and be able to meet with some of the people who helped change our country.”

Timothy Tyson, a professor in the Afro-American Studies Department who took a group of students to Mississippi four years ago, says, “Crossing the distance between Madison and Mississippi can help to bridge the distance between the past and the present, and between our learning and our lives.”

His goal is “for students to experience their learning at a deep enough emotional level that they have access to it, not merely for the final exam, but for the rest of their lives.”

The course was organized by the Campus Community Partnerships team at University Health Services, the Morgridge Center for Public Service, and faculty from the Afro-American Studies</> and History Departments at UW–Madison. The trip is supported by a grant from the Anonymous Fund.