Civil Rights Pilgrimage 2024

Learning about slavery in America

In late January 2024, 10 pilgrims from FUMC traveled to four cities in Alabama to learn more about slavery in America, the struggle of blacks post slavery and the civil rights protesters that fought for equal rights for all. They visited prominent sites of the Civil Rights trail in the cities of Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma. They also went to Mobile where they visited the Africatown Heritage House.

In good company with Gov. Whitmer, Mayor Duggan and other Michigan politicians at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

In front of Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma.

Historical Sites

Some of the sites the group visited included the Historic Bethel Church; Kelly Ingraham Park; 16th St Baptist Church; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; Equal Justice
Institute Legacy Museum; National Monument for Peace and Justice; Edmund Pettus Bridge; and the Africatown Heritage House.

Union Baptist Church in Mobile.

Kelly Ingraham Park in Birmingham.

Rev. Dr M.L. King at the Washington Monument.

Civil rights & equal justice

The pilgrimage was eye-opening for the participants. It was painful to revisit the atrocities of slavery and the racial discrimination left in its wake. The group was inspired by those who fought for civil rights and those that they met that continue in the work of equal justice. This trip and the previous pilgrimage of 2022 are laying the foundation of anti-racism work at FUMC.

Interested in attending future pilgrimages? Email info@fumc-a2.org.

National Monument for Peace and Justice: each box is a country where lynching occurred.

Mothers of Gynecology in Montgomery.

“The Four Spirits” monument in Birmingham.