Most Recent Posts
Jerusalem
An update from Jaeidah R., a senior studying biological sciences and Jewish studies: So far, I have only been in Israel for 1 day, and it is the day that we walked the city of Jerusalem, exploring all of the biblical stories that have occurred here. From the time that I landed in Tel-Aviv I knew that this land is one that I have dreamed about my entire life. Growing up Christian, these stories shaped everything about my beliefs [...]
Rev. Robert Graetz
Reverend Robert Graetz was the only white minister in Montgomery willing to help Dr. King with the bus boycott, with Associate Professor and trip leader Ben Voth. "I was honored to give this civil rights hero my book about my favorite civil rights hero James Farmer Jr.," says Voth.
Churches
First Baptist Church in Montgomery, where Freedom Riders were trapped in 1961. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where King was first pastor and led the Montgomery bus boycott.
National Israel Holocaust Memorial
An update from Jaeidah R., a senior studying biological sciences and Jewish studies: Today was the day that we were scheduled to visit Yad Vashem, the National Israel Holocaust Memorial museum. Our guide previously informed us that this visit was not one to depress us, but just inform us of the Israeli narrative for the creation of Israel and the future that Israelis see for themselves. Naturally, I took this with a grain of salt. The memorial of millions of [...]
Memorials all
An update from student Tannah O.: Today we visited the Civil Rights Memorial, the historic Dexter Avenue Church, and the Equal Justice Initiative office in Montgomery, Alabama. The Civil Rights Memorial was powerful, to say the least. It had an exhibit to memorialize the 40 people killed in direct relation to the modern Civil Rights Movement, which of course included so many of the faces we have learned about so far on this trip (Till, Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman, Liuzzo, Reeb, Evers and King) along [...]
A Visit to the Southern Poverty Law Center
An update from student Sadiya P.: Today's trip, we visited one of my utmost favorite place and organization ever: the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)/Civil Rights Memorial Center. Ever since I got into activism and human rights as a teenager, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been one of my inspirations. It is the type of work I want to commit to. They have done so much in creating awareness in regards to the many different types of hate groups [...]
Eye Opening
During the SMU Embrey Human Rights Program’s first study trip to Israel March 8-17, a group of 26 SMU students, faculty and staff and community members focused on learning about the country’s most pressing humanitarian issues – from the Palestinian crisis to refugee and LGBTQ rights. While staying in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Tel Aviv, the trip-goers visited sites steeped in both ancient history and ongoing controversy.
Tuskegee Bioethics Center/ Selma/Edmund Pettis Bridge
An update from student Justin E.: Today we were exposed to the Tuskegee Syphilis study conducted by the United States Public Health Service. This federally funded medical study raised questions about bioethics and medical research guidelines. In 1932, Dr. Tolliver Clark decided to exploit poor, rural African Americans using deception to discover the natural course of syphilis in the human body. He recruited 600 black men, 399 with syphilis and 201 without. African American nurse Eunice Rivers helped recruit [...]
