Last semester, College of the Ozarks sent eight students and three faculty members on the Civil Rights Movement trip through historical locations in the South, April 30-May 4, 2024. (Front row, left to right: Mr. Dan Swearengen, Dr. Charity Gibson, Mikala Mustain, Alice Ann Ishmael, Zach Hawkins, Jacob Usrey, and Alison Wagner. Back row, left to right: Dr. David Parrish, Allison Atcheson, Emily Howser, and Caden Prock)
Last semester, College of the Ozarks sent eight students and three faculty members on the Civil Rights Movement trip through historical locations in the South, April 30-May 4, 2024.
Dr. David Dalton, Distinguished Professor of History and Elizabeth Hoyt Clark Chair of Humanities at College of the Ozarks, led the trip. He has impacted the lives of students for over three decades through his love of American history and by leading students on once-in-lifetime trips, both domestically and internationally.
College of the Ozarks offers the Civil Rights Movement course every even-year spring, and this semester, eight students had the opportunity to combine classroom lectures with real experiences on the trip to better appreciate the heroic work of Civil Rights activists and events. The course provides an examination of the major themes, individuals, groups, and events of the struggle for black equality from the Reconstruction era to the present.
“Simply put, there is no better teacher than for a student to be able to walk in the footsteps of history,” Dalton said. “I can lecture about a topic. I can show students videos of what actually happened, but nothing compares to when a student walks in the places of history, tracing the steps of those fighting for their civil rights.”
The first stop on the trip was Little Rock Arkansas Central High School, where desegregation by nine students became a crisis in 1957. Students were able to see the school and stand in the place where history happened. The second stop was Money, Mississippi, where 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered for speaking to a white woman in 1955. Students then had the opportunity to travel to Jackson, Mississippi, to the home of Medgar Evers, who was the Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary. Evers was murdered in his own driveway.