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Banner image: 91���� students view a mural honoring community leaders outside of the Margaret Walker Center in Jackson, MS. Photo provided by the Margaret Walker Center. 

Every year, 91����’s Office of Community Engaged Learning plans Alternative Spring Break trips that offer opportunities for student learning and enrichment. The trips are designed to expose students to social justice and cultural issues through direct service, community engagement, reflection and cultural activities. 

For 2025, one of the trip options was a six-day/five-night tour through historic sites in Mississippi, called “May 1970, Student-led Collective Empowerment, and the Civil Rights Movement.” Students and faculty visited Jackson State University, where in 1970, two Black students at a gathering were killed by police and others wounded just 11 days after the shootings at 91����.

Associate Director of the Office of Community Engaged Learning, Craig Berger managed the logistics and budget for the trip and made arrangements with campus partners at  Jackson State. Alison Caplan, director of 91����’s May 4 Visitors Center accompanied the students and faculty on the trip. 

The 91���� group also visited historic sites in Money, Mississippi, the town where in 1955, Emmet Till, a 14-year-old Black youth, was brutally killed by two white men after he was accused of offending a white woman. In their trial, his murderers were found “not guilty” by an all-white jury, drawing national attention to the lack of Black civil rights in Mississippi.

91���� students and faculty also visited the Margaret Walker Center, an archive, museum and Black Studies institute, dedicated to the preservation, interpretation and dissemination of African American history and culture, and the COFO Civil Rights Education Center, a museum that’s located in the former state headquarters for the modern Mississippi civil rights movement, and the home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers. Medgar Evers was a civil rights advocate in Mississippi. His assassination in 1963 sparked a national outcry and further galvanized the civil rights movement. 

The Journey Was a Transformational Experience

The connection between the events at 91���� and Jackson State in 1970 is “a relationship tied to trauma,” said Ashley Nickels, Ph.D., an associate professor in Peace and Conflict Studies, who accompanied students on the trip. She said that it is a shared history and while May 4 has been much bigger in the national consciousness, the trip was important in helping students understand the deeper history of how the tragedies at 91���� and Jackson State are related.

“But it’s also different,” Nickels said. “It’s a different story, it has its own unique history, its own important message for us, as representatives of 91���� to really understand and bring home.”

Some of the faculty and students who went on the trip “brought home” more than they had anticipated. 91���� Today met with students and faculty who had been on the trip when they gathered for a reunion at the May 4 Visitor Center. It’s fair to say that many of those who traveled to Mississippi didn’t anticipate how the people they met and the sites they visited would evoke profound emotions and awaken the activism within them.

‘It’s Not as Far Apart as I Thought it Was’

Anna Spagnola is a graduate student working on dual master’s degrees in emerging media and technology and French translation. She’s also a Community Action Fellow in 91����’s Office of Community Engaged Learning. Spagnola said that she uses the skills she’s learning in translation and media in working with clients, helping them get from one place to another. She thought the trip would help her learn more about civic engagement in civil rights and give her ideas about her skills to make a bigger impact in helping the community.

In Mississippi, Spagnola felt moved by having personal experiences with things that she had only read about in history books. “And when you read them, there’s this disconnect because it feels like it happened so long ago. It’s in history,” she said. “But going to the places, talking with the folks that were there on the day of the Jackson State shooting, it made me realize that this is all real. And it's not as far apart as I thought it was. And even though the history feels like it’s like 60, 70 years ago, a lot of it is still echoed in what we do today.”

When asked what she brought back from the trip with her, Spagnola said, “My takeaway is that the history that we encountered on the Jackson trip feels like it’s from a different era, but the movements that happened can still happen today, and there's a lot more I could do as a student than I originally thought I could do.”

‘I Felt So Sad, But Empowered at The Same Time’

“I’m a Black woman, but I don’t think that I was taught too many things in schooling at home, et cetera, about what it means to be Black, what it took to be able to walk around as a Black woman or as a Black man. So, it was something I wanted to dive deeper into,” said Alexis Belcher. Belcher is a second-year student studying early childhood education at 91����. She works in the Office of Community Engaged Learning and had originally planned on participating in a different Alternative Spring Break trip to Nashville, but when it reached capacity, she had to select another destination – Mississippi – which turned out to be a transformational choice.

“We met with amazing people who were activists, who were survivors of the Jackson Mississippi shooting,” said Belcher. “And I mean, you can hear about things, but you never really know until you hear it from a person’s mouth that experienced it. Those people have so much strength and just the fact that they can talk about it in such a peaceful way, the fact that they persevered through situations like this and experience these things firsthand, again, left a mark on my heart, truly.”

She reflected on learning more about Emmett Till and standing in the locations where the story unfolded, like the store and the courthouse, in Money, Mississippi. “I felt so sad, of course, but empowered at the same time, if that makes sense,” Belcher said.

‘I Was So Changed'

“I realized the power that I hold as a black woman, as an educated black woman, and I don’t feel like I sat in that enough,” she said.

Belcher acknowledges that “we have come far, but there’s still so much more to change to happen.”  She said she thinks that in bringing about change, some people struggle with knowing where to start. “Not knowing if I start here, what is this going to do? I’m one person, if that makes sense,” Belcher said. “So how can I get with people who think the same way that I do? How can I get with the community and truly make a lasting change?”

“It was a beautiful spring break trip, one that I would’ve never imagined going on, to be honest. And I was so changed,” she said. “If the opportunity arises to go back, I will go back and learn the exact same things all over again. Listen to the exact same people talk because it was just so inspiring, and it was so beautiful.”

This Trip Felt Different

Nickels has been involved with several Alternative Spring Break trips and thinks this one was special, for both herself and the students who were transformed by it. “Throughout the process of really understanding Mississippi history, understanding Jackson State history, understanding the events of May 1970 in Mississippi, understanding the civil rights movement and just peeling back layer after layer after layer, and then talking about it in the context of our own history and their own experiences, by the end, students were talking about, saying ‘I want it to get more involved,’” she said.

“And that doesn't mean radical politics,” said Nickels. “It meant ‘I want to be more involved in my communities.’ ‘I want to be more involved with sharing this history.’ ‘I want to be more involved in making sense of this collectively.’”

“And that, to me … I have goosebumps right now talking about it,” she said.  “It was so profound and that happened in five days.”

‘This Will Live With Me Forever’

“It was transformative for these students,” Nickels said. “And I think for me, I’ve planned alternative break trips. I’ve done a study away. I helped to facilitate the trip to Flint back in 2020 pre-Covid. And those were all amazing experiences. 

“Every experience I've done has been transformative,” she said. “This one, I don't know if it was the group the moment, but this will live with me forever.”