City Staff Participates in U.S. Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance Connectivity Pilgrimage

Invited by Virginia Tourism Corporation to be part of the Virginia delegation, city staff traveled to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama to participate in the United States Civil Rights Trail Marketing Alliance Connectivity Pilgrimage. The Virginia Delegation joined over 100 attendees from seven states including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Attendees retraced the route of the Voters Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, which included walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the sight of the “Bloody Sunday”. Joanne Bland, a foot soldier, recounted being 11 years old and participating in the marches. By the time the marches had occurred, Joanne had been arrested 13 times.

The pilgrimage continued to the Rosa Parks Museum and then onto the Holt Street Baptist Church site. Holt Street Baptist Church was the site where 5,000 people gathered to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The evening ended with a speech from Fred Gray, Rosa Parks’ attorney.

On the second day, attendees visited Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church at which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher. The final stop for attendees was the Legacy Museum and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park sites that cover the horror of enslavement, lynching’s, voting rights and mass incarceration, over 400 years of history with immersive exhibits.