A one-day bus tour is showing local college students the many ways southwest Ohio is connected to our nation’s Civil Rights Movement.
About 100 students from Wright State, Central State, and Sinclair Community College are participating in the event, along with several Dayton community leaders and former students.
For 10 years, Tracy Snipes, professor of political science at Wright State’s School, has designed these pilgrimages across Ohio and into several southern states.
Snipes said many college-age students are fascinated about improving the current society. They also want to better understand what motivated college age students in the 1950s and '60s to get involved with the Civil Rights Movement despite the very present dangers.
"There's a hunger on the part of some young people to connect with recent cases of police brutality connecting those incidents to very struggles that we've had in the past," Snipes said. "I also believe, too, that they're trying to create the vision of the kind of America that they would like to live in."
Snipes pointed out that in the '60s, Miami University hosted non-violent training for college students who participated in the Freedom Rides to the south.
The pilgrimage will include guest speakers and stops at significant Civil Rights landmarks at Miami University in Oxford; Covington, Kentucky; Cincinnati and in Dayton.
