Yesterday (Day One)

After a long night on the bus and a late arrival, hearing Dr. Robert Baker's lecture at Georgia State University was the best kick-off to the trip that I think we could have asked for. Not only was it really cool to hear from a professor who has a connection to our own state--Dr. Baker has written a book on Joshua Glover, a fugitive slave rescued by several thousand people in a Milwaukee jail in 1854--it was also great to hear about all the precursor events that led up to the Civil Rights movement that we'll be learning about over the course of our journey through the South.

Dr. Baker's talk was most effective for me because he really set up an overview for us of the time leading up to the Civil Rights movement we're mainly learning about on this trip. As he jokingly mentioned in the beginning, Dr. Baker is "most comfortable in the seventeenth century and way out of place yesterday or today," and his knowledge of many events leading up to the movement we'll be learning about over the next week proved to me how much he really did know about many aspects of history.

His lecture focused on different kinds of rights: human rights, civil rights, citizenship rights, and Fourteenth Amendment rights (citizenship, representation, payment of debt, etc.--for more info on 14th Amendment rights, this website is good: http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv).

It has also been really great getting to know everyone on the trip and hear about all the different experiences that we have had in our lives. I'm so excited to continue to learn with everyone on the trip and in the class over the next week!