Meadville Lombard Theological School is offering an eight-day bus tour of southern civil rights sites March 18 to the 26, 2006, during the week of the school's spring break.

This course will give students an experiential look at some of the social, religious, and political dimensions of the Civil Rights Movement. A key feature of the tour will be conversations with veterans of the Movement, with scheduled stops in Birmingham, Marion, Selma, Montgomery, Hayneville (in Alabama), Meridian, Philadelphia, Jackson, Greenwood, Money, Ruleville, Oxford (in Mississippi), and Memphis, Tennessee.  Additionally, audio and video presentations will be given on the bus and there will be stops at several Unitarian Universalist congregations. 

The tour is designed as a credit course for theological students and can serve as continuing education for ministers, but is also open to anyone interested in learning more about the Civil Rights Movement.

Students taking the tour as a credit course will be expected to have completed required reading before the trip and to have prepared and submitted to the instructor a written report on a topic related to the trip. These written reports will be used, in written or oral form, as part of the en-route instruction in addition to the audio and video recordings played on the bus. Non-student participants will have the benefit of learning from the student presentations.

Evening debriefing and discussion sessions will be held several times during the trip and are open to all tour participants.  Each student seeking credit will submit a post-trip summary report of her/his observations and learnings to the instructor; this summary report may be in any medium of the participant's choosing.

The fee ($1,000 double occupancy or $1,300 single occupancy)  includes overnight accommodations, all admission charges, and most meals. Return the registration form and a $250 non-refundable deposit to save your spot on this historic tour. Registration is on a first-come basis, with a maximum of 30 registrants. Registration closes and payment in full is due on January 18, 2006. After January 18, fee refund may not be possible.

The instructor, the Rev. Dr. Gordon Gibson, first encountered issues of race in the South as a Unitarian teenager. As a newly ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he was a participant in the early phases of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, and served a jail sentence in Selma. From 1969 through 1984 he was the Unitarian Universalist minister in Mississippi, where the previous full-time settled minister was shot and critically injured by the Klan in 1965. 

Gordon has researched and written about Unitarian Universalist involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, and has seven years experience as an EEOC investigator in Mississippi. He and his wife, Judy, have led similar tours in 2004 and 2005.

For more information, view a full brochure with registration information for the class, or contact the Academic Office at 773-256-3000, x228.

Non-student registration is limited to 20 (on a first-come basis) and must be received by January 18.