Inside Civil Rights

Inside Civil Rights 2027: Sacred Spaces as Sites of Resistance

Inside Civil Rights connects people, places, and moments of the civil rights era to the legacy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and to today’s efforts to secure racial justice and policy change. This five-day travel opportunity takes students to the heart of the Civil Rights Movement for an intensive firsthand look at how efforts to dismantle racial discrimination in the South serve as a foundation for today’s campaigns for racial and social justice.

This year’s program explores the theme of “Sacred Spaces as Sites of Resistance.” We will ask how religious communities and spaces of worship, including Black churches and fraternal and interfaith organizations, functioned as sanctuaries, organizing hubs, and training grounds during the mid-20th century Civil Rights Movement. These institutions were often among the few spaces owned and controlled by African Americans, and they offered refuge from violence, a platform for leadership, and a shared moral language for resisting oppression. We will also look at the diversity of religious thought within the movement, from the nonviolent Christian witness of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the teachings of Black Muslim communities and leaders such as Malcolm X, and at the ways other faith communities partnered with, supported, or at times failed the movement. Through our focus on Memphis, TN and Little Rock, AR, we will consider how faith and race shaped the struggle for justice, how religious communities sustained activists, and how those relationships continue to inform movements today.

In Memphis, we will explore how sacred and community spaces fueled the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike. We will visit Clayborn Temple, the historic church that served as a gathering place and staging ground for striking workers and the “I Am a Man” campaign. We will also visit Mason Temple, headquarters of the world’s largest African American Pentecostal denomination, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final speech. And we will explore the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated, to understand the broader context and major events of the movement, including the role of clergy and faith-based organizing. At the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, we will trace the connections between gospel traditions and soul music, and consider how Stax Records, among the few truly integrated spaces in Memphis and much of the South, brought people together across racial lines. At the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery, we will examine Ernest Withers’s photographs of church gatherings, marches, and everyday life, which document the faith communities at the center of Black life in the mid-20th century South.

In Little Rock, we will explore the tumultuous 1957 desegregation of Central High School, which prompted President Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce Brown v. Board of Education. We will examine the role Black churches, ministers, and congregations played in supporting the Little Rock Nine and their families, and consider how segregation continues to impact education, housing, culture, and economic development today. We will visit First Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1845 by an enslaved person, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the church’s 118th anniversary sermon in April 1963, four months to the day before the March on Washington and his “I Have a Dream” speech. We will visit the historic Dreamland Ballroom, located in a once-thriving African American business district known as “The Line,” which served as an important space for cultural and artistic expression and a source of economic growth. We will conclude at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and celebrating African American history and culture in Arkansas, including the fraternal and faith-based institutions that sustained Black communities.

The trip will culminate with student participants developing and presenting their own ideas for community spaces and programs that promote dialogue, peace, and justice. Drawing on what they have learned about religious and faith-based spaces, students will consider how places of gathering can foster moral courage, mutual support, and collaboration across difference, including across religious and racial lines.

The study trip is open by application to first-years, sophomores, and juniors who seek a greater understanding of the forces driving and resisting social change.

Applicants must be REAL ID compliant to board domestic flights and access certain federal facilities. Applicants must currently have a REAL ID or be able to get one prior to domestic travel.

Spring 2026

• Monday, March 22, 6-8pm: Pre-Departure Session 1
• Monday, April 26, 6-8pm: Pre-Departure Session 2
• May 10-15: Study Trip (Note: The trip may include travel on May 9th as well, subject to the availability of flights)