Connection weaved through the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll and into the lives of several southern Illinoisans as a local nonprofit sparked conversation and healing on the Civil Rights Movement through a journey to Memphis. That connection was felt at the dinner table over bowed heads in prayer, in a hand of playing cards and in the exhibits of history that reached out to touch the minds viewing it.
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 12, the morning light spilled all around a bus in a nearly empty parking lot as suitcases were loaded into its lower storage compartment. Seats were filled and the bus full of nearly 30 southern Illinois residents departed from Marion, Illinois. The bus traveled over 200 miles south to Memphis, Tennessee, giving these travelers a chance to immerse themselves in the nation’s Civil Rights history.
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Connect 360, a nonprofit organization based in Marion, chartered a bus to Memphis and spent two days exploring culture and lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement and learning how that period shapes American freedom and equality in the present day.
“I want them to understand history first and foremost,” Connect 360 President Carmen Allen Adeoye said. “That’s the main thing, because you can’t really evaluate, equate and move forward unless you know what happened prior.”
The executive board of Connect 360 applied for a Healing Illinois grant to fund the trip. According to the Illinois Department of Human Services, the Healing Illinois grant is a statewide effort that distributes $4.5 million in grants to nonprofit organizations to start or continue work of racial healing in their communities. The organization’s primary goal is similar to that of the trip – to bring communities together in solidarity to learn about Black history and promote racial healing.
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“One of the purposes in doing so, it might help you to be better equipped to interact and stop looking at color, but looking at content and character, because at the end of the day that’s what it’s really about,” Adeoye said.
Thursday morning, the group gathered outside of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. A red and white wreath hangs from the balcony outside room 306, the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The museum led the group through several interactive exhibits that spanned across key moments in the Civil Rights era from a replica bus with a statue of Rosa Parks all the way to the room where Martin Luther King Jr. was staying when he was killed.
Adeoye said she found herself identifying with the material in the museum. She went through the ‘60s and recalled memories of attending a segregated school up until its desegregation when she was in the sixth grade.
“I’m hoping that folks will get the correct and not the watered down or the movie version of it, it was traumatic. I was traumatized as a kid, and sometimes I still have flashbacks, because people don’t understand there’s so many dynamics,” Adeoye said. “Some of us were born under this pressure and managed to excel despite.”
To Connect 360 executive board member Nancy Maxwell, the most impactful moment for her happened once the museum trip was over. A woman named Jacquline Smith has been outside the Lorraine Motel since her forceful eviction from the motel on March 2, 1988. Smith’s stance is that the museum does the exact opposite of what King would have wanted and has instead become a tourist attraction rather than something that could give back to the community.
Maxwell said she felt that what Smith was arguing made sense to her.
“It made me think about all the events we do for Martin Luther King, but are we really working on the dream? Could we be doing something else with the money we spent,” Maxwell said. “It just made me think. I mean, there’s gentrification there clearly and slowly that whole area over the last 30 years has been taken over and turned into this moneymaker, again, off of Black people’s backs.”
Vivian Robinson, member of the Connect 360 executive board, said that to her, being able to hear real stories and feel the emotions at the National Civil Rights Museum is what she’ll take away from the trip and back home with her. Not only was she impressed by the examples of strong activism shown throughout the exhibits, but she said also that of the interest in everyone attending the trip with Connect 360.
“I was so impressed, you know, I’ve been to Memphis before but this was a group that have all their hearts in this kind of change,” Robinson said.
It wasn’t just the museums and historic landmarks of history that left an impression on the group’s mind, but also the moments at the table were moments that united the group. Robinson recalls piling into the back room of Central Barbecue for lunch, where plates of food crowded with barbecue, mac and cheese, salad and other choices sat on top of blue gingham tablecloths.
“We all were in the same room and you know, everybody was talking and we laughed so hard,” Robinson said. “It seemed like the atmosphere was a little more relaxed and people could talk and really connect.”
Linette Moore, an attendee on the trip and member of Connect 360, said the Stax Museum of American Soul Music which the group visited on Wednesday was a highlight to the entire experience. The different displays of famous musicians and a wall full of old vinyl records guided her through the museum.
Moore also echoed the sentiment on how well received the National Civil Rights Museum was to the entire group and their experiences.
“Seeing how they left Martin Luther King’s room the same way it was, and just to see the room what he was in, that was so awesome for me,” Moore said. “I can go tell my grandchildren that I saw this, and I wanna bring them back so they can see these things.”
The buzz of Beale Street and the sounds of Earl “The Pearl” Banks playing an instrumental of an Otis Redding song carried its way through the Blues City Café on Thursday evening. The group closed out the trip with their last Memphis meal sitting at the old diner-themed chairs and table in the restaurant.
Once back at the hotel, a small table in the corner of the hotel’s lobby was used for multiple rounds of different card games that many different members of the group rotated in and out of late into the night before returning home the next morning.
Editor-in-Chief Lylee Gibbs can be reached at lgibbs@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @lyleegibbsphoto. Student Managing Editor Dominique Martinez-Powell can be reached at dmartinez-powell@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @d.martinezphoto
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