The Civil Rights Trail Pilgrimage
New Orleans • Jackson • Montgomery • Birmingham
October 18–27, 2024
Cosponsored by the Community Presbyterian Church of Clarendon Hills and the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago

Community Presbyterian Church and Fourth Presbyterian Church invite you to be part of a curated journey to locations central to our nation’s civil rights movement.

This ten-day pilgrimage to the South—Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi—promises to deliver a deeper understanding of and insights into the historic movers and movements of the historic and ongoing civil rights struggles as we learn personal stories, visit museums and historical sites, and experience cultural immersion.

JOIN US AS WE

• Worship at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four young girls were killed in the 1963 Birmingham bombing.

• Tour the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery that honors—by name—the 4,000-plus African Americans lynched in twelve Southern states from 1877 to 1950.

• Visit the Whitney Plantation, a former sugar plantation in Edgard, Louisiana, where the history of enslavement in the U.S. is related from the perspective of the enslaved.

• Visit the Emmett Till Intrepid Center, the Glendora, Mississippi, museum that documents the fourteen-year-old’s 1955 murder, and the courthouse where the trial of two suspected killers, who were acquitted, occurred.

• Bond with other participants and ancestors of faith by hearing powerful accounts of freed African Americans’ struggles, and be inspired by their resilience, while sharing in daily reflections and prayer.

Registration for this unique experience will be open to congregants and friends of Fourth Presbyterian Church and Community Presbyterian Church of Clarendon Hills and to members of the Chicago Presbytery.

Estimated cost, not including airfare:

Cost for each person in a Double Room: $1585
Cost for one person in a Single Room: $2650

• Breakfast and dinner are included, but lunch every day is on one’s own.

• Room accommodation will be in hotels.

• Transportation between cities (and between various sites within cities) will be by motorcoach.

• Participants are responsible for their travel to New Orleans and their return from Birmingham to home.

Application deadline is July 1, 2024, by which time a deposit of $500 is required.

Full payment is required by September 1, 2024.

Ready to register for the trip?

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Friday, October 18
New Orleans
Arrive in New Orleans. (Participants are responsible for their transportation to New Orleans and to the hotel.)

Saturday, October 19
New Orleans
Group tour of Whitney Plantation, a ninety-minute bus ride from our New Orleans hotel. We will return to New Orleans midafternoon and will enjoy a group dinner that night at the famous Dooky Chase Restaurant.

Sunday, October 20
New Orleans
After an early breakfast and a fifteen-minute bus ride, participants will attend worship at New Zion Baptist Church, followed by a presentation of the church’s history, which includes being the site where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed.

Participants can explore New Orleans on their own for lunch and the afternoon. Options include a half-day walking tour of such historic places as the country’s oldest neighborhood of free people of color at Tremé and visits to Congo Square, the Back Street Culture Museum, the Petit Jazz Museum, the New Orleans African American Museum, and the Lee Musée de Free People of Color.

Monday, October 21
New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi
Following breakfast, we travel via motorcoach to Jackson, a five-hour ride, where we will check into our hotel.

Tuesday, October 22
Jackson, Mississippi
Tour of the Medgar Evers Home followed by a buffet lunch at Mama Hamil’s and a visit to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

Wednesday, October 23
Jackson to Mound Bayou and Glendora, Mississippi
Participants will take a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride to Mound Bayou, a historic Black community that proved key to the freedom movement. Emmett Till’s mother stayed here during the trial. Other points of interest include the B.B. King Museum.

Participants will drive through Money, Mississippi, where the site of Bryant’s Grocery Store, location of the event that precipitated Till’s brutal murder, is located. Also scheduled is a visit to the site where Emmett Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Emmett Till Intrepid Center in Glendora, and the courthouse where the Till trial occurred. A visit to the Emmett Till Interpretive Center will provide a discussion that describes race relations in 1955 and efforts underway toward racial reconciliation.

Thursday, October 24
Jackson to Montgomery, Alabama
After breakfast, participants will take a five-hour bus ride to Montgomery, where they will hear presentations at the Dexter Avenue parsonage, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family lived at the time his home was bombed in 1956, and the King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. King preached and where the December 1955 Montgomery bus boycott was organized. Other places of interest are the Rosa Parks Museum and the Freedom Rides Museum.

Friday, October 25
Montgomery
Participants will visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which commemorates Black lynching victims, and the Legacy Museum (shown at left).

Saturday, October 26
Montgomery to Birmingham
After breakfast, participants will take a ninety-minute ride to Birmingham and tour the historic 16th Street Baptist Church and watch a powerful video presentation about the church’s bombing, which killed four young girls. The day also will include a visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a Smithsonian affiliate that houses the jail cell where Dr. King wrote his famous letter from the Birmingham Jail, and a self-guided tour of Kelly Ingram Park, with its sculptures portraying the civil rights struggle in Birmingham.

Sunday, October 27
Birmingham
This last day of the tour will conclude with a 10:45 a.m. worship service at the 16th Street Baptist Church. All are responsible for their travel arrangements home.

If you have questions or need further information, please contact Robert Crouch, Director of Volunteer Ministry (312.981.3382).

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