Pictured Above: Fieldston students and faculty with Mayor Steven Reed of Montgomery, Alabama
On February 9, upperclassmen in select History and Ethics courses took a two hour flight to Atlanta, marking the beginning of a 4-day revelatory pilgrimage to Montgomery. As soon as we arrived, our trip leaders, Ethics teachers Rachel Ehrlich and Dr. Tinia Merriweather, asked us to think of Montgomery as a “contested space,” where competing histories dwelled in uncomfortably close quarters.
Having taken either the “History of the U.S. Criminal Legal System” or “The Prison Complex: Ethical Issues in the U.S. Criminal Justice System” elective to be eligible for the trip, all students attending were already well-versed on the relationship between state sanctioned oppression of people of color, modern policing and mass incarceration. We had come to Montgomery to see these issues at play–it is the belly of the beast.
A sleepy city that feels more like a small town to New Yorkers, Montgomery’s historical legacy is its loudest trait, plastered on street signs, statues and murals on unassuming buildings. Slaves were auctioned in the city’s main square, just a few blocks from our hotel. They were trafficked up the river visible from our rooms’ windows. Conversely, other inconspicuous spots turned out to be the sites of incredible resistance: Martin Luther King Jr.’s unassuming brick church, a moving lynching memorial atop a hill with abandoned buildings and no sidewalks. Every place we visited, from numerous Black-owned restaurants to the First White House of the Confederacy, was within a mile radius of our hotel.
The trip was centered on a couple of key destinations. The first day we visited two monuments by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. EJI was founded in Montgomery by famous litigator and author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson. EJI provides high quality legal representation to prisoners who are victims of wrongful conviction, impoverished prisoners who cannot afford adequate legal counsel and those who have been denied fair trials. We started the day with The Legacy Museum, an immersive journey through Black history, persecution and resistance, through art and not artifacts: documentary shorts, animated shorts, sculptures, holograms and music. The Museum was a perfect segue into the Memorial–a square of 800 iron monoliths suspended from a ceiling, each representing a county where people was lynched. After an hour of independent reflection in the Memorial, we crossed the street to an EJI auditorium to meet Law Fellow Laurel Hattix. Just a few years out of Law School, Hattix was able to squeeze us into a packed day to enlighten us about her work, her views on the criminal justice system, and her advice to aspiring activists. She blew us away.
After a debrief in affinity groups and a delicious barbecue dinner, we started the next day by speaking with another civil rights attorney. Ms. Jackie Aranda Osorno worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and spoke to us about her legal work centered around improving Alabama prison conditions and discussing prison abolitionist ideology. Osorno gave the perfect introduction to the SPLC, the organization behind the Civil Rights Memorial Center we visited later that day. A different approach than the narrative structure of The Legacy Museum, this museum’s goal was to commemorate the Civil Rights Movement and inspire activism.
The rest of the day we had to explore at our own leisure. A large group went to the First White House of the Confederacy to explore an opposing perspective of the Antebellum South, and later to the Freedom Riders museum at the sight of the Greyhound station where it all started. That night, some students were able to speak with Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed after dinner. Reed spoke with students about everything from fostering the city’s local economy to his experiences being the first Black mayor elected in Montgomery.
The next morning, we rushed to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, once Dr. Martin Luther King’s church, anticipating a large crowd. We had found out the day before that Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor at Ebenezer Church in Atlanta where Dr. King also pastored, was to preach Sunday at Dexter.
Form VI student Ben Lindenbaum took the “History of the US Criminal Legal System” elective this fall, and said “The trip to Alabama was an incredible experience. Not only was the food delicious, but it was eye-opening to be exposed to such an intense history in a hands-on way. I was especially moved by The Legacy Museum, which used powerful images and historical examples to paint the through line of racism and oppression in American history. I had already learned about the criminal justice system and its connection to slavery and segregation in my first semester history class, but learning about these topics in school is truly incomparable to visiting The Legacy Museum, walking through the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and speaking with lawyers who have dedicated their lives to fighting against these issues. As one of my teachers said, this was a classic Fieldston experience.”
Form V student Star Blakney touched on the breadth and depth of emotion felt on the trip by students, “The trip to Alabama was filled with excitement, self-reflection, joy, sadness, anger and so many more emotions one could not describe in words but simply in memories,” Blakney said. “The Legacy Museum in particular was one of the highlights, because of the way Bryan Stevenson and EJI put together a provocative memorial for the history of slavery, mass incarceration and police brutality which Black people faced over centuries in America.”
The trip fearlessly and Truly honored Montgomery’s unique position as an emblem of progressivism in tension with both the history of Alabama as a prominent slave-holding state and the city of Montgomery as the cradle of the Confederacy. The trip also fearlessly embodied Fieldston’s spirit as a bastion of Progressive Education. This was an empowering and thought-provoking experience outside of the classroom, which inspired us all to continue thoughtfully questioning, challenging, championing empathy and promoting justice.
