{"id":1661,"date":"2017-12-18T14:28:34","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T14:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning201314\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2017-12-18T14:53:35","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T14:53:35","slug":"civil-rights-trip-frey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/2017\/12\/18\/civil-rights-trip-frey\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Rights Trip: Frey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWandering between two worlds, one dead, \/ The other\u00a0powerless to be born, \/ With nowhere yet to rest my head…\u201d-Stanzas From the Grande Chartreuse<\/em>, Matthew Arnold<\/p>\n

Charles Frey \u201919<\/em> \u2014 Walls are decaying and caved in. Windows are busted out, shards of jagged glass cover the sidewalk, and the bars in front of what used to be a door are locked tight. The words \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d is seen on the side of the building, next to some green graffiti.<\/p>\n

Walk two blocks toward the square. A grassy field in front of a law building. Bright white, tall, and imposing. Surrounding it on all sides are equally impressive buildings. On the other side of the street are brick businesses, closed for the holiday.<\/p>\n

These were the two sides of Meridian, Mississippi I saw while following the town\u2019s Civil Rights Trail. Both formed an emotion I\u2019ve felt elsewhere along the journey south. It\u2019s a feeling hard to put my finger on, but one I can only describe as \u201ctime-locked.\u201d I don\u2019t want to say regressive because to be regressive would imply falling back. I can\u2019t say progressive because, while there are many signs of moving forward, historic sites are fading into obscurity.<\/p>\n

Meridian is time-locked, unsure of how to move forward yet determined to extinguish its past. Yes, information plaques mark sites with facts about people, dates, and events, but the locations in which these events happened are disappearing. And Meridian isn\u2019t the only place.<\/p>\n

In Selma, Alabama we walked from the Brown Chapel A.M.E Church to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and along the way I witnessed similar scenes of poverty combined with progress. An informational kiosk about Civil Rights leaders had been vandalized and just recently was replaced. Even with the new replacement, the informational canvas was already beginning to fray.<\/p>\n

In Anniston, Alabama we walked a different Civil Rights Trail, one that held a focus on the Freedom Riders. While interacting with local security in the courthouse, we asked for directions to the nearest plaque, to which the white security guard paused and asked his partner, \u201cThose information things we got last year?\u201d<\/p>\n

In Monteagle, Tennessee our bus stopped briefly at the site where the Highlander Folk School stood\u2014a location that trained many of the Civil Rights Movement\u2019s prolific leaders such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Because of the school\u2019s involvement with the CRM, it closed its doors and moved to Knoxville in 1961. It\u2019s original site? An abandoned shell of a building surrounded by rural homes.<\/p>\n

Over the years, there hasn\u2019t been enough action taken to maintain these historic sites. Despite the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, attitudes in the South have hardly changed regarding the preservation of African American heritage. Yes, the nation has propelled past segregation, but ignorance has halted the progress of select southern towns\u2014progress that should have happened 50 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWandering between two worlds, one dead, \/ The other\u00a0powerless to be born, \/ With nowhere yet to rest my head…\u201d-Stanzas From the Grande Chartreuse, Matthew Arnold Charles Frey \u201919 \u2014 Walls are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-civil-rights-road-trip"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1679,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}